Suddenly cool 'Roaring Game' poised to take Las Vegas by storm

GANGNEUNG, South Korea - They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

But when the world's best male curlers sweep into Sin City in April, the sport's officials want the world to know about it.

Celine Dion, Cirque du Soleil and the world curling championships will all feature on the glitzy Strip marquees when the "Roaring Game" (so named for the sound made by rocks sliding down the ice) makes a most curious Las Vegas debut.

The World Curling Federation (WCF) has decided now is the time to roll the dice and double down on the spike in popularity the sport will enjoy in the wake of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

How to sustain that momentum is the issue facing curling officials, with interest after past Games disappearing faster than an ice cube left out in the Las Vegas sun.

Seemingly at odds with the Olympic youth movement's march towards adrenaline-fueled extreme sports, curling is suddenly cool, having long been the domain of moms and pops and Saturday beerleague bonspiels.

Mr. T, of Rocky and A-Team fame, has been tweeting throughout the Pyeongchang Olympics with the hashtag #curlingiscoolfool. Rockers Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen are rumored to have picked up a curling broom from time to time, bringing new meaning to the term rock 'n' roll.

Over the past decade the WCF has watched television viewership trend upwards with a surge during Olympic years, which has helped to pull in new sponsors, new events and new countries.

In order to be included on the full program at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, curling needed to have 30 member nations and regions. Twenty years later there are 60, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with more to come and a growth explosion predicted.

Where a decade ago wearing curling gear would have got you arrested by the fashion police, the Pyeongchang Olympics has made it ultra cool.

Sports e-commerce company Fanatics, which handles merchandizing for the US Olympic Committee, said curling reached No 2 in the list of best-selling Olympic sports, behind hockey, for a few days as shirts with the Team USA curling logo were in demand.

Brands like Cheetos latched on to curling ahead of the Games, running a whole campaign around "Do the Curl".

"Instead of us having to chase after sponsors we're finding, at long last, that sponsors are coming to us which is great," said Kate Caithness, the Scottish head of the World Curling Federation.

"We are the fastest growing winter sport and we're just in a great place."

Like every other sport's boss, from the National Basketball Association to the Premier League, Caithness has her sights set on China and 1.3 billion potential curlers.

Having already established a firm foothold in South Korea and Japan, the WCF will soon begin a major push into China in the run-up to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Televised World Cup

Part of that effort will be helped along by a $13.4 million sponsorship deal the WCF has signed with Kingdomway Sports to develop a made-for-television World Cup featuring the top men's, women's and mixed doubles teams that will have four major events, two in China, one in North America and one in Europe.

"We must get visibility, we're just really pushing now," said Caithness.

"China is such a huge market for us, I'm on the coordination commission for 2022 and they are putting 300 million people into winter sport between now and 2022.

"They are building 500 ice rinks, which will be for all sports, but there is a big, big focus on curling in China because they have a realistic chance at a medal."

The other market the WCF is keen to crack is the US, which has not embraced curling's charms nearly as much as its neighbor to the north.

With more than 1 million registered curlers, Canada has more people playing the game than the rest of the world combined. Names such as Eddie "The Wrench" Werenich and Sandra "The Curler" Schmirler are as familiar to Canadians as those of hockey players.

Despite entering the Olympics as world champions and the favorites to win gold, Canada's women's team was eliminated from medal contention after a shocking loss to Britain on Wednesday.

No Canadian team has ever left the Olympics without a medal in men's or women's curling since the sport was reintroduced to the Winter Games in 1998.

Balancing tradition with the new sporting reality will require the finesse of an angled double-raised takeout.

The venues for this year's world championships give a snapshot of curling's past as well as a glimpse of its future: the women played in snowy North Bay, Ontario, while the men will hit the ice in Vegas.

Since becoming part of the Olympic program, curling has worked hard to shed its image as a game played on weekends by unfit men and women.

Curlers going for gold in Pyeongchang are far more athletic than earlier generations. At the 1988 Calgary Games, when curling was a demonstration sport, Canadian skip Werenich was told by the Canadian Curling Association to shed weight so as not to embarrass the country.

That everyman element is part of curling's allure.

Olympic medalists with a hint of middle-age spread who have day jobs as firefighters, police officers and cooks don't look so different from viewers who can convince themselves that if they too played enough they could get that good.

"We could take anybody off the street and bring them in here and show them how to curl and very quickly they can participate," boasted Caithness. "To get to this level takes time, but it is a sport for all.

"We have juniors and a 90-plus league in Canada."

Reuters