National Post (National Edition)
Koe team taking it to the house with live streams
In a curling season like no other, with so many big events cancelled or postponed, high-performance teams around the country are looking for innovative ways to navigate through the icy, uncharted waters.
The Kevin Koe team out of Calgary has come up with a unique way to steer away from the doom and gloom of the COVID-19 pandemic by providing curling fans and sponsors with a view of the game they've never seen before.
The Koe team, made up of Olympians, gold medallists, multi-Brier winners and world champions, has decided to turn their watered-down, mostly regional playing schedule into something fun and unique, offering live streams of their games and a behind-thescenes look at life off the ice for a travelling curling foursome.
“Everything in the world is different these days,” Koe said this week. “You can either wait for it to get back to normal, if that ever happens, or just try to roll with the punches.
“The feedback we've had so far has been awesome.”
Partnering with a production company out of Regina called The Strategy Lab, the foursome has developed what it is calling Koe-Tube (pronounced “Koo-Tube”), a Facebook Live channel (available at the Team Kevin Koe Facebook page) which has shown all of the team's games so far this season and has followed the foursome around as it travels from location to location in a motor home.
Complete with commercials that the curlers have starred in and featuring play-by-play by curler Pete Steski and a variety of guest commentators, the channel has drawn up to 20,000 viewers for games so far.
The Koe foursome played its first event of the season in Airdrie, Alta., over the Thanksgiving weekend and then played again in Banff this past weekend.
“Showing a different side of ourselves and some behind-the-scenes footage with these guys, I think it's kind of cool for fans,” Team Koe lead Ben Hebert said. “I'm a huge sports fan and when HBO did those 24/7 series for the Winter Classics in hockey, or Hard Knocks series on the NFL. Those are amazing.
“We're trying to do a little bit of that. Obviously, we don't have that kind of capability to be able to do a full show, but we've done some behind-the-scenes interviews, travelling around Alberta.”
In a normal year, the Koe team would be travelling the country to play in big-money events like the Grand Slams, earning plenty of television exposure for their sponsors. With most of those events cancelled or postponed, many teams are taking to trying live streams, to give sponsors a little bang for their buck.
Koe, third B.J. Neufeld, second John Morris and Hebert have taken it a step further.
“This is just really unique and cool,” Hebert said. “Our sponsors all jumped all over it. They thought it was really innovative.
“We're just trying to make the best out of a crappy situation. We're really grateful to be able to play and we thought this would bring some good light to curling. So far it's been unbelievable feedback.”
The foursome spent four days in Calgary in September, shooting commercials with their sponsors. When they hit the road to start play, they included two producers with four cameras in their six-person cohort group.
“They come with us as our coach and our fifth,” Hebert said.
The production crew has taken a look at what the players do between games, how they stay loose and how they unwind with a beer or a cocktail at the end of the day. On the ice, all four members of the team are mic'd up, as is the skip of the opposing team,
“I think it might even be the way of the future for curling,” Hebert said. “I don't think you're going to be able to watch only the big games on Sportsnet and TSN any more. I think after a year like this and a lot of teams being creative, including ourselves, I think you're going to see every World Curling Tour event have a live stream, with commentating.”
On the ice, the Koe team has been a little rusty so far. The 2019 Brier champions and world silver medallists lost in the quarter-finals of their first event and in the final last weekend in Banff.
That's somewhat to be expected, given the team has a new player — two-time Olympic gold medallist John Morris at second — and was off the ice from March until mid-October.
“It was the longest break of probably any of our lives, really,” Koe said. “We're taking a bit of the cobwebs and rust off but I can already tell it's gonna be a good dynamic going forward. Hopefully we'll be playing in some bigger events in the new year so being able to play these games, being a new team especially, is important.
“John is the new guy but we've all known him forever. He has fit in great and the more we can play, the better we'll get.”