On the Slams and Streaming

And the Broom Brothers...

It was a wild summer. I could only allude to it for quite some time, but we are here, the week of the first Grand Slam and the debut event for The Curling Group, and I am set to be a pretty big part of everything.

It was very fitting that Facebook Memories reminded me of this just a few days ago:

It’s been over 12 years since I have been trying to create curling content, starting out with my webseries Cullen and a Curler in the Royal City Curling Club men’s locker room chatting to Ben Hebert with my then-second Jay Wakefield’s arms trembling as he struggled to keep my iPhone 5 aloft. I was using a microphone I bought from a Future Shop (remember those) that just plugged into the phone’s AUX port (remember those) and it worked for precisely two interviews: Ben’s and the one with Kalynn Park that followed.

I did a “Between Two Ferns” take-off with Mike McEwen in Brooks that no one understood and everyone thought Mike and I actually hated each other. I drove to Abbotsford, BC after a day of teaching to hit a 30-minute window that Niklas Edin had between practice and a team meeting with then-coach Peja Lindholm to do one. CurlingZone was always on-board from the beginning and Gerry helped me out a lot, posting the videos on the CZ YouTube page and helping me in any way he could.

From there to Stone & Straw to commentating for Curling Live to Way Inside to Broomgate, it’s been a wild ride and I couldn’t be more excited for the next chapter. I have always felt like curling was not just an amazing sport, but had an amazing set of personalities that deserved to be showcased. I knew that if people just got to know curlers, they would love them, and if people love athletes in a sport, they tend to start loving the sport.

So it’s really exciting that The Curling Group has made it an early mission to make the Grand Slams player-forward, and to push the game itself forward in a way that it deserves. As you may have seen on socials this week, there’s a host of things around the corner, and I wanted to tell you about how I’m going to be involved and how excited I am for where the sport is heading.

First of all, I’m going to be at all the Grand Slam events doing commentary with Brent Laing, Tyler George, and a host of your favourite curlers. There’s going to be a bit of an open-door policy and we have some new and unique commentating formats that I think are going to add a lot to the sport. We haven’t fully announced that yet, but things will look a little different on select draws and the coverage will be presented in a way curling never has before. I had no choice but to laugh at this snippet from The Curling News:

Being sandwiched between a multi-time World Champ and an Olympic Gold medalist with credits like “podcaster” and “two-time BC Men’s finalist” is a privilege and I’ll do my best to help everyone else in the booth shine. There’s been a lot of questions online, but here is what you need to know about the streaming:

1. Every game on every draw will be streamed. There won’t be commentary or player audio for every game, but at the very least, you’ll be able to see it. There will remain no TV coverage on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That means that the Tuesday and Wednesday draws will have ONE feature game that will look like a TV broadcast, with commentary/player audio, and then the other 3 games will be presented on video.

2. But perhaps even cooler, once the TV coverage starts on Thursday, if you have cable or a Sportsnet package, you’ll be able to choose between TWO feature games: the one that’s on TV, and the one we are commentating on stream. It’s something fans have wanted for a long time, and it’s going to be a pleasure to bring it to you. If it were me, I’d probably watch both. And maybe have the other 2 games without the audio streaming too. Monitor sales are set to rise across Canada. Productivity will be at an all-time low.

3. It was a little disheartening this week that when curling fans were brought the news that every game at the Charlottetown Slam was being streamed for free, with games featuring player audio and high-level commentary, that the first thing they thought to do was gripe that maybe it wouldn’t eventually be free. What? First of all, all the information you have right now is that it is free. Who suggested it wouldn’t be? Seeing listed prices on other Home Team streaming products and assuming that’s the exact number that the Slams are going to eventually charge (if they charge at all) is so wild to me. And even if they do eventually charge, this one is free. And it’s every. freaking. game. Free. Guess how many Slams you’ve had in the last 15 years that had every game streaming, and all for free? That’s right. The answer is zero. So even if it’s only one—and again, you (and I) have absolutely no evidence to the contrary—that’s better than zero. The Curling Group bought the Slams less than six months ago, and they are delivering on one of the first promises they made when they took over—not easy to do. So sit back and enjoy, and maybe learn to not have your immediate reaction to be making a bunch of assumptions and then acting entitled about them. Rant over. See you on the streams this week.

I’ve also launched a brand-new curling podcast with my friend Robbie Doherty called The Broom Brothers. Doing a regular curling podcast every few weeks that recaps all the news and drama from the world of curling with unique and personality-driven player interviews is something I’ve always wanted to do. Robbie and I had actually discussed doing a show together a couple of years ago and then he got really busy with life stuff (way to have a kid, dude) and it didn’t work out. He’s always been my dream partner for something like this and we are really happy with the first episode, which is out now.

You can listen to it HERE, and we recap the wild news of the offseason, the early season successes of a few teams, and we predict where the season is headed. Then, we invite Benoît Schwarz-van Berkel onto the show for a great interview where we discuss his team’s hot start, his love of watches, baking bread, and his Olympic household (his wife is also an Olympian in swimming). We’ve already vaulted up to #4 on the Canadian sports podcast charts, and early feedback has been great, so be sure to listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

And lastly, I’ll be at every Slam also helping make social media content. As I said in earlier newsletters, Nic’s earliest recognition when he took over was that curling has a real content problem. There’s a dearth of it both from the highest organizations and from the teams and the players themselves. I know for sure he and his team have been helping and encouraging teams to do more on socials, and this early season has yielded some really cool and unique stuff like Tyler Tardi’s 10x10 challenge that has already been taken up by Oskar Eriksson and Magnus Ramsfjell, and Team Kleiter teammates Joshua Mattern and Trevor Johnson challenging each other to a 100m race and turning it into weeks of content in anticipation and getting their sponsor, Supplement King, involved as well. We have so much fun stuff planned for the season and I can’t wait for you to see it all.

So that’s it! It’s gonna be such a fun season. But don’t worry, I will not be abandoning you. Newsletter content will still be coming semi-regularly, and also don’t fear that just because I’m working for the Slams I’ll become fully biased and Slam-pilled. My eyes and ears will be on every aspect of the sport, and that’s also being encouraged by Nic. You may have seen, but I did some work for Curling Canada this week at the PointsBet Invitational that was super fun, and there will be more stuff like that from me that won’t just be Slams-focused.

As I said off the top, thank you as always for the support. There’s no doubt in my mind that the passionate curling fans who have supported a silly little newsletter about the sport for the last few years as well as my various other ventures have contributed in a huge way to this (when I tell people in curling what my subscriber numbers are, they’re always so blown away, and I thank you), and I look forward to bringing you even more content over this season, which will be my busiest yet. Love you all.