Curling seeks an end to reliance on Olympic spotlight

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 the sport 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 program 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, it experiences peaks and troughs of interest in a pattern pegged to the Winter Olympics.

"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 figure out how to make curling more accessible to a broader audience in between the Olympics," Welling said.

"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 worlds

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 regions.

There will also be a system of promotion and relegation between the divisions.

Welling said these changes were enacted to make the sport more accessible.

"We see this as opening up curling to everyone, but also to newer, nontraditional countries," he added.

"There's a real definite pathway to get to Olympic qualification points, whereas the old system, I wouldn't say it was a closed shop, but it was more difficult to break through. Now that pathway is going to be much clearer.

"I think, on the development side, we very much want curling to grow, and we want it to grow not only in terms of curlers, but also fans, as well as the development of these newer member associations."

From the links to the rinks

Welling is a golf course designer by trade, and his company was involved in the design of the virtual green used in the TGL, the tech-infused indoor golf league formed by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

The South Carolina native first became interested in curling when it was held as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary.

That led to him traveling to the 2006 US National Championships in Bemidji, Minnesota as a fan, where he was immediately embraced by the curling community.

A few months later, he was asked to join the US Curling board, setting him on a journey that would culminate in him being appointed president of World Curling in September 2022.

"I'm from the state of South Carolina, where there's no ice, really. We just put ice in our drinks. Personally, I was just fascinated watching the sport on television," Welling said.

"Ultimately, the more I watched on television, the more fascinated I got. I come from the world of golf. I design golf courses. It turns out that curling and golf are both ancient Scottish sports. There's something about that which was a part of the appeal."

Reuters