On July 29, 2019, Curling Canada events manager Terry Morris made a presentation to city council projecting the attendance and TV viewership for the 2020 World Women’s Curling Championship in Prince George.
The event, then planned for March 14-22, 2020, was expected to have an attendance of 60,000 to 80,000 people and TSN’s coverage was expected draw six million viewers, Morris told council. The 2018 version of the event in North Bay, Ont. was watched by 6.7 million people on TSN and more than 86 million worldwide on World Curling Television.
Then on March 11, 2020 – three days before the start of the event – the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. The curling championship was cancelled on March 12, 2020, and the world went into lockdown for two years.
When the 2022 BKT Tires & OK Tire World Women's Curling Championship finally did come to CN Centre on March 19-27 this year, the attendance and TV audience were both much smaller than projected by Curling Canada in 2019, according to a report going before the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George board of directors on Thursday.
According to the report, total attendance at the tournament was 34,773.
Switzerland’s gold medal game against South Korea drew the biggest crowd – 2,292 fans, far from a sell-out in the 5,971-seat venue.
The total TV broadcast audience for the event was 4.7 million – averaging just under 350,000 at any given time, and peaking at 511,400 during Canada’s bronze medal match against Korea.
In addition to the TV coverage, 260,722 people watched coverage of the tournament on YouTube, the report says.
“We were really happy with it,” Nolan Thiessen, Curling Canada’s director of broadcast, marketing, innovation and event presentation told the Citizen following the event. “Honestly, two weeks ago B.C. still had 50 per cent capacity limits and stuff like that, so how can fans come out and make plans and the same for us, how can we make plans? As things opened up and the fans started coming out to support Canada and the other teams, we’re really happy with how it ended up.”
- With files from Ted Clarke
