No Soup For You, Curling Fans

Canadian curling fans are up in arms, already, as the word begins to spread. 

The PanContinental Championships taking place on Canadian soil will not be televised in Canada.

Too bad, really, as TSN recently spent some dough on a new show soundtrack and graphics.

 The Rachel Homan and Brad Gushue fours squads will represent Canada at Lacombe, Alta. starting Sunday. The championship finals take place Nov. 2.

This third-year event on the World Curling calendar serves as a qualifier for the 2025 world women’s and men’s championships held in March and April.

Think of a “rest of the world” event compared to the annual European Championships, where the biggest chunk of world teams are decided.

The Sports Network is the Canadian rights holder for World Curling tournaments but they’ve said “no thanks” to picking up the feed.

Fans in Canada will need to do what the rest of the world often has to do to watch—subscribe to the Curling Channel, the dedicated streaming platform owned by World Curling.

This really shouldn’t be a surprise. Perhaps some folks have already forgotten last year’s PanCon in Kelowna, B.C. where the feed wasn’t deemed to be of appropriate quality, and TSN dropped coverage after a couple of days.

Terrestrial coverage, that is. Games involving the Canadian teams—Gushue and Kerri Einarson—were still available online and through the TSN+ app.

Y’all were super mad, though.

And this year’s anger will only grow after this story is published, and it will peak when Canucks try to tune in to watch.

To repeat the mantra: Livestreaming is now a big thing in curling, and we tried to tell faithful fans—years ago—that it was headed that way.

An excerpt from the above 2021 piece by Matt Brouwer:

Of course, we all want everything for free all the time, but it’s easy to think of games shown on the likes of TSN and Sportsnet to be “free” since Canadians already pay for the channels through monthly cable subscription fees. The actual free stuff has been a very recent phenomenon.

Producing a half-decent broadcast takes money. Producing a highly polished broadcast takes a lot of money. Equipment costs money and crews need to be transported, housed and paid.

Free streaming, except for hobbyist broadcasts, is going away.

Perhaps The Curling News needs to refresh a “how to” story to help curling fans figure out how to cast online to their television screens. 

And another one that runs through how to actually purchase the coverage without running afoul of scammers.