Curling seeks to break free of reliance on Winter Games spotlight

Jan 5 : World ‌Curling President Beau Welling wants to sweep away the sport's Olympics-only tag and slide into a new era where fans are engaging with it throughout the year.

Curling, which originated in Scotland and is hugely popular in Canada, made its debut as an Olympic sport at the 1924 Games in Chamonix but was not part of the official programme again until 1998 at Nagano, which brought it to a worldwide audience.

The governing body's membership has risen to 77 associations from 28 since Nagano, but while curling is becoming more popular outside traditional winter sports strongholds it experiences peaks and troughs of interest in a pattern pegged to the Games.

"There's a lot of excitement and viewership around the globe every ‌four years, and one of the things we're working hard to do is trying to figure out how ‌to make curling more accessible to a broader audience in between the Olympics," Welling told Reuters. 

"We have our own very rapidly growing OTT platform, the Curling Channel. A fundamentally important strategic goal of ours is to get eyeballs on curling. We're working really hard to do that.

"We're very proud of our sport, a value-based sport with integrity and honesty. You call your own fouls, so sportsmanship is something that's very much lauded. In our mission to try to grow the sport, we want to grow our culture as well."

REVAMPED WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

In October, World Curling announced an overhaul of its competition structure with the annual world championships expanding ‍to 18 teams from 13 beginning in the 2026-27 season.

The revamped structure will introduce a B-Division comprising 16 women's and 16 men's teams, as well as regional C-Division championships - split into the Europe and Pan-Continental