The broom of second Shannon Birchard sweeps in front of a rock from skip Kerri Einarson as they play Team Newfoundland and Labrador at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Calgary, Alta., Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

The largest audience for curling happens every four years, but in a window when Canadian clubs are four to five weeks from closing for the season.

Curling Canada is urging clubs across the country to capitalize on the Olympic bump with a "Grow The Game" campaign.

The organization hopes that the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan and Cortina, Italy, which run Feb. 6-23, will get more people wanting to try the sport at that time.

Hosting Olympic curling watch parties or open houses, or learn to curl sessions, while people are feeling the buzz of watching the sport at its highest level, are some suggested options.

"People see it, they want to try it," said Bobby Ray, Curling Canada's director of club development and member services.

"We need to get people on the ice right there and then when they're thinking about it, when they have the impulse to want to try it."

The traditional model of leagues starting in the fall and ending late winter doesn't open doors to people who feel inspired by February's Winter Games to try throwing rocks, he said.

"We know from our membership number tracking that, during the 2018 Olympics, we didn't see any growth in membership as a result of those Games," Ray explained. "I sort of avoid talking about 2022 because it was a COVID Olympics, and it wasn't that same opportunity.

"But everyone says that the Olympics is the biggest opportunity for growth, that your phone's going to ring off the hook. Our numbers don't suggest that it actually went up in 2018.

"That's just because the action is delayed. We take contact information, we suggest we'll follow up next fall and try to bring people back into the curling world, but their excitement has fizzled."

CBC couldn't provide curling ratings from the 2018 or 2022 Olympic Games, although it reported during Beijing's Winter Games in 2022 that 1.81 million viewers tuned in Feb. 12 for a men's game between Canada's Brad Gushue and the United States.

CBC said that it ranked fourth among the most-watched events by Canadians at the 2022 Winter Games, with the women's hockey final drawing the most at 2.7 million.

The women's national curling championship, the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, and the men's national championship, the Montana's Brier, each draw a viewing audience of about five to six million spread over 10 days of competition, according to Curling Canada's annual reports.

Curling Canada has launched a Grow The Game website featuring a pledge board for clubs and individuals to post their own ideas and intentions for maximizing the interest the Olympics generates in their sport.

"We're really trying to get clubs and curlers to say what they're prepared to do, rather than Curling Canada telling them what they ought to do," Ray said.

"Part of the message is that it can be as simple as one night of curling, but the point would be people are interested, but they're interested now.

'That's just a societal phenomenon too that people don't have the attention span to wait until next fall to try curling."

Some of the early pledges Thursday included coaching high school curling, offering stick curling clinics in rural Nova Scotia, building a curling sheet on a lake, offering three "try curling" events in a single season, advocating for wheelchair accessible clubs and sharing one social media post a week from a league game.

Curling Canada's 2024 annual report stated that at least 2.3 million Canadians had participated in the sport in the previous year. The country's governing body for the sport says there are almost 1,000 clubs across Canada.

"We're seeing an all-time high registration in curling clubs right now, and so I think just building on that through the Olympics is important, especially for clubs that say they need the growth," Ray said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 9, 2025.

News from © The Canadian Press, 2025