Curlers crushed as Grand Slam postponed
Curlers who make their living on the cash bonspiel circuit expressed sadness, disappointment and deep concern over the postponement of the Grand Slam of Curling season, which was announced Wednesday.
“It’s almost like I got laid off today,” said reid Carruthers, who plays third for the Mike Mcewen team out of Winnipeg.
Sportsnet, which owns and televises the Grand Slam series, announced it will postpone the 2020-21 season to April 2021 and trim the number of events from six down to two, due to the ongoing risks of COVID-19 across Canada.
The Players Championship in Toronto (April 13-18) and the Champions Cup in Olds, Alta., (April 27-May 2) are the only events remaining on the schedule. Three other events have been rescheduled for the fall of 2021 and one event — the Meridian Open, scheduled for January in Las Vegas — is in limbo.
The Grand Slam events are very lucrative to high-performance teams as they include significant prize money, along with great sponsorship opportunities due to television exposure.
“I’m a little sad, actually,” Mcewen said. “you see these things coming, to be honest, but it’s still depressing when you actually get the confirmation of what your gut is telling you.
“For our team and lots of the other big teams — (Brad) Gushue, (Kevin) Koe, my wife (dawn Mcewen’s) team (Jennifer Jones) — there’s quite a few well-funded teams that have some big companies behind them. If our TV exposure gets cut in half or what have you, that potentially could lead to some conversations with your sponsors.”
Many of the top teams in Canada — teams with aspirations of representing the country at the Olympics — earn their primary source of income through curling. It’s a full-time job in the winter, travelling around to cash bonspiels across Canada and the world.
There’s some money to be made at the smaller events, but the real money and TV exposure comes from the Grand Slams, the Canada Cup, the Brier, and the Tournament of hearts.
The Canada Cup is scheduled for the end of November and Curling Canada has not announced a postponement or cancellation, but many believe it’s inevitable.
“I don’t see how we play any major competition,” Winnipeg skip Jason Gunnlaugson said. “The simple reality is for any league that doesn’t make boatloads of money, it’s not going to make sense to play in the middle of a pandemic. It’s going to be tough to do and probably not the best course of action.”
So that will leave the curlers to play smaller, regional events throughout the fall, a prospect less appealing for curlers and their sponsors.
Carruthers, a 2011 world champion, makes his living at curling and works as a substitute teacher. Both vocations are in an unknown place with regard to the fall of 2020.
“I’m nervous financially,” said Carruthers, whose annual curling camp in August was also cancelled due to the pandemic. “It’s a little scary right now when you’ve got a house and mortgage. My throwback was to go back to teaching and I’m not even sure the schools are going to be open in the fall. It’s not an ideal situation.
“The Grand Slams are an integral part of our curling schedule. For us, we’re going to have to try to put together some sort of schedule in the fall that’s gonna keep us sharp, so that when we are back to curling on a very competitive schedule, we’re ready to play.”
Two-time Olympic gold medallist John Morris said this week that the idea of a return to grassroots, regional curling is not necessarily a bad thing for the game and Gunnlaugson concurred.
“I think the major events are all going to make calls like Sportsnet made (Wednesday),” Gunnlaugson said.
“Once all that happens, then we’ll get to see which clubs can open, which communities are still doing well with the virus, and I feel like something will get built from the bottom up out of that opportunity, which could be really great.”
As for the financial constraints, Gunnlaugson put that into perspective as well.
“All the curlers who travel and have the budgets that we have are really worried,” he said. “But there’s a lot of people who have it a lot worse than we do. We still all work and do this as a pursuit of craziness.”