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Closing Shot: Curling ensures its popularity doesn't melt away

A darling of the Winter Olympics, curling is using a series on NBC Sports to help ensure that its status remains. While not a viewership bonanza, the series elevates the curiosity factor among people wanting to try their luck with a broom and stone.

Team USA’s Becca Hamilton competes during NBC Sports’ “Curling Night in America.”USA Curling

As recently as 2013, neither the Denver Curling Club nor the Evergreen Curling Club in Beaverton, Ore., even had their own facilities.

 

But today, both clubs’ new private ice sheets are bursting at the seams, with wait lists for individuals and corporate groups that want to try their hand. Clubs across the country have seen similar surges, USA Curling reports.

 

Niche Olympic sports often enjoy a moment in the spotlight after the U.S. wins a gold medal, as the men’s curling team did in Pyeongchang last year. But curling appears to have some staying power, and one reason is NBC Sports’ “Curling Night in America,” a property that will wrap up its fifth season on Friday night.

If you had to pick one Olympic sport to try out with your buddies, curling would understandably be at the top of most people’s lists.
Jim Bell
President of NBC productions and programming,

“I think those events have a big impact, or certainly a future impact, on the game,” said Scott Stevinson, a member of the Denver Curling Club, where there’s a 1,000-person wait list for their “Learn to Curl” program and 200 corporate groups wanting ice time. “It’s really interesting to see the increased interest when people see it on TV. It used to just be in the Olympics.”

 

“Curling Night” is hardly a ratings heavy hitter, but it’s one of two entirely new properties created in recent years, including the World Curling Federation’s World Cup circuit launched this year, that gives the sport a consistent regular-season cultural presence.

  

Viewership for the first-run “Curling Night” shows are up 36 percent this year from 2017 through four weeks, NBC reports, with viewers peaking at 150,000 during a Nov. 30 airing.

 

USA Curling

Jim Bell, president of NBC Olympics production and programming, said the network can serve both the small core fan base while maybe picking up new casual viewers. “If you had to pick one Olympic sport to try out with your buddies, curling would understandably be at the top of most people’s lists,” Bell said. “It’s fun, it’s intense and it’s approachable.”

 

The Denver Curling Club plans watch parties around “Curling Night,” Stevinson said. The Evergreen Curling Club has had less success with “Curling Night” as a draw by itself, said past president Bruce Irvin. But the TV exposure has knock-on effects on membership growth and education.

 

“Everybody’s seen it,” Irvin said. “And it’s on enough in the background that they think it’s a legitimate thing. It’s like Coke, or volleyball. Even if you’re not a huge fan, if you’re flipping through the channels, you see it once in a while. It’s not that surprising. There’s a lot of value in that.”    

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