No Olympic hangover for curling

When American athletes land in Canada, they inevitably ask the same questions: Who eats ketchup-flavoured potato chips and why is there so much curling on TV?

The first answer will forever remain a mystery, but a look at the weekend ratings might answer the latter question. Even in the post-Olympic funk, with Canada's gold medal champions sitting out, the Brier even managed to beat out Hockey Night In Canada's late game. Sure, it was a 10 p.m. start in the East, but still the Canadiens and Kings aren't exactly bottom feeders.

What's more amazing is that curling drew an average audience of 846,000 on Sunday night -- up against the Oscars. Then again, the curlers put on a  better show with fewer lame jokes and no bad dance routines.

While curling is building on its success from Vancouver, the NHL isn't in the U.S. Sunday's Detroit-Chicago game, as entertaining a game as the NHL serves up these days, score a 1.2 rating. That's better than the 1.0 rating NBC recorded a year ago, but down from the NHL's last pre-Olympic game on NBC.

None of those are great numbers, though the weekend NCAA basketball games didn't produce any better for CBS.

1. NHL, Maple Leafs at Senators, Saturday, CBC: 1,812,000

2. Curling, Brier evening draw, Sunday, TSN: 846,000

3. NHL, Canadiens at Kings, Saturday, CBC: 793,000

4. Curling, afternoon draw, Saturday, TSN: 773,000

5. Curling, evening draw, Saturday, TSN: 705,000

6. NHL, Hockey Night In Canada pre-game show, Saturday, CBC: 695,000

7. Curling, morning draw, Sunday, TSN: 599,000

8. Curling, afternoon draw, Sunday, TSN: 597,000

9. NHL, Maple Leafs at Flyers, Sunday, Sportsnet: 478,000*

10. PGA, Honda Classic, Sunday, Global: 325,000

11. NBA, Raptors at Knicks, Friday, TSN: 322,000

12. NASCAR, Kobalt 500, Sunday, TSN2: 312,000**

13.  NBA, 76ers at Raptors, Sunday, CBC: 218,000

* Ontario only

** Viewers on Fox not calculated.

Comments

[Josh]

I was among those who watched the curling over the Oscars on Sunday night. I have watched sports of some type, usually curling or basketball, on Oscar night for quite a few years.

[Rick Grace]

Why do some in this country refuse to accept the fact that curling is a major sport in Canada?
The media, especially from the Hogtown area, does their best to show how they don't care about curling.
These are the same people who think baseball is exciting by the way.
But every week the TV ratings for curling are large.
Baseball and basketball would kill for that type of interst.
But face facts here.
Canadians love curling.

[JGH]

For sure a good following with curling, Rick - but I believe it has a LOT to do with the amount it's shown on TV. Do you think that if curling had the market saturation of Baseball (or Basketball) and was on for 162 nights a year PLUS many other out of town events events on many other channels that it would have the same numbers? It's like Figure Skating - it does very well for the amount it's shown - but if figure skating was available with the same regularity of hockey - (multiple events on multiple nights, PLUS out of town packages and the Figure Skating Network) it would draw flies.

[SF]

Not much of a mystery on the chips. Who would put ketchup on fried potatoes? The mystery is why Americans have trouble figuring that one out.
-
The curling numbers aren’t a mystery either. Curling has been a major Canadian sport for a long time. It was interesting to read that Wall St. was catching on to curing during the Olympics as well, but not that surprising when you think about it. It’s a thinking person’s game, and it’s very Canadian in that way. If there is a mystery here it’s why so many Canadians watch NHL hockey. I don’t think NHL hockey, aka Bettman hockey, is very good hockey at all. It’s a dumbed down version with much of the skill and most of the playmaking removed, and I’m not surprised that Americans aren’t taking to it. It’s been known for 20 years that the NHL needs to do to make ice surface bigger to restore a balance and flow to the game, but Bettman won’t do it.
-
One more note. Curling is a major Canadian sport, but it’s not a major sport in Toronto. Raptors basketball is pretty well strictly a regional Toronto sport. The fact that CBC has stopped covering the major curling events but does cover Raptors basketball is just another example of how CBC is no longer a national network and has become little more than a regional Toronto station.

[SF]

JDH
I’m sure there are a more televised curling matches than basketball games, and probably almost as many as there are televised MLB games. Here’s TSN’s schedule. Add to this the Olympics and what other networks are carrying and you get a lot of games.
http://www.tsn.ca/curling/feature/?id=1085

[DLind]

Exactly JGH.

With the new PPM, Blue Jays weekend afternoon games shouldn't be too far off some of those lower Brier numbers - and the Blue Jays play every weekend for 6 months. The Brier is once a year.

[DLind]

Interesting point, SF..

It really does seem that the Toronto sports market is becoming increasingly different from much of the rest of Canada. I suppose the multiculturalism and size of Toronto probably plays a big part in that.

Since there are about 8 million people within 2hours of TO (about 1/4 of the country), you almost wonder if everyone would be happier if there was TSN and TSN Toronto. Especially as the makeup of Toronto continues to become more diverse, and presumably, the interests continue to diverge. Dump basketball, baseball and NFL stuff on the Toronto station to keep people like me happy, and focus on curling and CFL on the main channel to keep people like Rick Grace happy.

[JGH]

SF, this is a significant schedule for sure..but is about a weekend's worth of baseball or hockey.

[Justin]

as Chris has in previous blogs, Toronto CFL audiences are actually higher than Raptors and CFL research has shown 75% of their fans also watch the NFL, so TSN TO is largely useless. Just like Sportsnet regional channels were largely a waste and are now changing.

Just show the sports on whatever channel whether it is basketball, baseball, NFL, curling to keep everyone happy.

[Josh]

SF, CBC didn't really dump curling coverage. They bought exclusive rights a few years ago, and put many of the weekday draws on Bold (called Country Canada back then). That pissed a lot of people off, including the Canadian Curling Association. So the CCA terminated their contract, and signed exclusively with TSN. CBC losing curling wasn't lack of interest, it was because of a stupid move to get more subscribers to their digital channel. The same goes for the CFL, CBC wanted it but the CFL didn't want the CBC. CBC is airing Raptors because they have lost all of the sports they'd like to have (besides hockey and soccer).

Also curling doesn't come close to the amount of coverage as baseball. The Jays play 165 games themselves, not to mention the 150 or so other games on Sportsnet every year. I'd argue that baseball actually gets most games on TV in Canada, followed by the NHL. To compare curling and figure skating is fair. Both get weekday and weekend coverage of the Canadian and World Championships, but only minor coverage of the other big events (Grand Prixs for figure skating and grand slams for curling). Having said that curling gets better ratings.

DLind, I don't see the point of splitting TSN into TSN and TSN Toronto. Right now TSN has it perfect, they are the #1 speciality channel in the country and TSN2 is the #1 digital channel. I don't see any reason to mess with success.

[Rick Grace]

I agree Lind.
We should stick you with baseball and basketball.
Nobody outside Toronto cares about either.
We'd be happy with more CFL, NHL, curling and CIS sports.
And not have to be subjected to the latest NBA tilt from Portland or wherever they play down there.
Then again you look at the Raptors getting 200,000 viewers nationally on CBC?
It appears not even people in Toronto care about basketball.

[SF]

DLind
I think you’re partially right, but I think Toronto needs to be broken down more than that. The CFL actually draws a lot of viewers in the GTA, for example. There were only a small number of athletes from the GTA competing at the winter Olympics but many Torontonians watched them as well. I’m not exactly sure where to draw the dividing line, but I suspect that it’s downtown Toronto that has largely become detached from the rest of Canada, not only with respect to sports but culturally to a significant extent as well. I don’t think diversity is the whole answer because Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal are very diverse cites as well. How big this group is is an interesting question, but the Bills in Toronto games have shown that it’s much smaller than almost everyone in the Toronto sports media thought it was, including Rogers himself. He thought he could charge a premium for the tickets and easily sell out, but none of the games have even come close to selling out and scalpers have been having trouble dumping tickets for even 10% of face value. That’s a HUGE difference in demand. I’m only guessing, but I’m thinking that this segment might be more like 1 million relatively affluent people in downtown Toronto. I think this segment probably accounts for maybe 80% - 90% of the ticket sales for the Jays, Raptors, and also the people who paid full price for NFL tickets. (I think a lot of other people probably picked up cheap scalpers tickets just for the novelty of seeing an NFL team in Toronto. Heck, I would have paid $30 to see that.) W.r.t. TSN, I don’t think either TSN or Sportsnet are serving the national audience very well at all, and I suspect that the ratings for their sports news shows and the hits on their websites are suffering greatly because of it. Is there any chance we can get the numbers for the sports news shows Chris?

[JGH]

SF, we've gone over this time after time after time. There is a huge NFL fan base in Canada and in Toronto. What there aren't are people who will pay 4-5X what we can pay 2-4 hours down the road. We are also not BILLS fans. People in Toronto hardly consider themselves Bills fans.
I'm a perfect example of my previous point. I'm a big NFL fan, and LOVE the Dolphins. I've seen the Dolphins multiple times (Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, etc.)
In Dec 08, with a good record and an important divisional game vs. Buffalo - in my home town of Toronto. You know what? I wasn't going. No way was I going to pay big bucks for a seat when I could watch it from home - like I do every weekend. As for the $30 or so tickets that everyone says were there? I wasn't risking going down there for that either..and for another reason, the Stadium absolutely sucks for football.
Rogers didn't overestimate NFL fans in Toronto. They underestimated their intelligence.

[SF]

Josh
If you have a look at the TSN link i posted it shows almost 100 televised curling matches, and at the very least you have to add the televised Olympic games to that. There are probably more televised baseball games but not all Jays games are televised, (and probably more are televised than can be justified by the ratings because Rogers owns the team. They’re vertically integrated with the Jays and they have to consider what’s good for them as well.)
W.r.t.the CBC, putting curling on Country Canada was almost the same as dumping it. That’s not the way to handle a major Canadian sport. Again we see that the CBC isn’t really interested in being a national network anymore. It’s essentially a local Toronto station and with respect to serving the Toronto market maybe that move did make sense. W.r.t. the CFL, the CBC still has the broadest reach and was in the best position to take advantage of CFL television rights. Imagine what the PPM ratings would have been this year if CFL games would have been on CBC? But they made a very weak offer and TSN, a second tier cable channel, ended up winning the rights. That shows pretty clearly, imo, that the CBC didn’t really want the CFL rights. They did pick up some soccer games as you say, but they didn’t pick up Montreal Impact or Vancouver Whitecaps games. They only picked up Toronto FC games, which yet again shows that the CBC is not even trying to be a national network.