Women’s curling championship to be big draw, council told

Prince George will be front and centre – as in centre ice – when the Women’s World Curling Championships are held at CN Centre next year.

Curling Canada events manager Terry Morris was in city council chambers on Monday night to give a presentation on the benefits the event will bring to the city and among them is the number of times the City of Prince George logo will be shown on television.

“If you calculate that on each end, 16 rocks will pass over that logo with the camera following it, and within a 10-end game, that’s 160 views you’re going to get per game,” Morris commented.

Typically, the host city’s logo is placed near the centre of each of the four sheets put in place for the championships.

Set for March 14-22, TSN will provide 50 hours of live coverage over those nine days, while World Curling Television will be good for a further 75 hours.

If Canada makes it into the championship game, Morris said TSN’s coverage will draw about six million viewers. WCT, in turn, will reach out to 47 countries and about 86 million viewers, the majority of them in China.

As for attendance at the games themselves, Morris said 60,000 to 80,000 tickets will be scanned over the course of the tournament based on past experience. About 70 per cent of fans will be from the local area, a further 15 per cent from 100 to 200 kilometres away and the rest from out of country.

Fans, officials, players and sponsors will take up 2,500 to 3,000 hotel rooms, each of them spending upwards of $500 in the city, according to estimates derived from an economic impact study.

And he said Curling Canada will typically spends about $1 million locally to put on the event.

As for attendance at the games themselves, Morris said 60,000 to 80,000 tickets will be scanned over the course of the tournament...