Professional Curling is a Mess

Yesterday, The Curling News broke the story that the World Curling Tour and the Curling Champions Tour (basically the North American and European pro curling tours... more or less) were merging. I think this is positive news for professional curling, but it touched on something that has bothered me for quite awhile. Which is that the professional curling season makes absolutely no sense.
Curling is stuck in a weird spot that is halfway between being an amateur sport and a professional sport. For years, the biggest events of the curling season were national, continental and world championships... and they still are. In Canada, the highest watched curling events are the Brier and the Tournament of Hearts. But competing for your country, province, region, club, etc. are hallmarks of amateur sport. There's nothing wrong with that, but by its nature, it prevents a true best on best competition. For example, if two teams from Alberta were the best two teams in the world, they would never be able to play against each other for a national championship (notwithstanding the introduction of the wild card teams next year), let alone a world championship. This is where the professional side of things should step up. And while we do get bonspiels with the top teams in the world now, they fail to match the magnitude of things like the Brier and come across as a disconnected bunch of unrelated events. We have the Grand Slams, which is a great series of events from the perspective that it provides enough prize money that athletes can at least make a decent amount of earnings on tour, but while they're technically part of the World Curling Tour, it never really feels like it. Rogers (Sportsnet) runs the show and for the most part they treat them like separate events with little relation. And while there technically is a Grand Slam Cup and Cup Winners Cup, there's little emphasis on the former and nothing special about the latter. Also, it only considers Rogers' Grand Slams and not the dozens of other events on tour throughout the season.

I'm going to compare the curling season to three other sports: tennis, golf and Formula 1. All three, like curling, are a series of events that add up to a complete season.

Tennis, I think, has one of the best point systems in sports (the ATP World Tour anyway). There are 4 levels of events: the Grand Slams (2000 points for the winner), Masters (1000 pts), the 500 and 250 events. There's nothing complicated about how many points are at stake, there's no factoring for the strength of field (like curling's Order of Merit does now), and it's easy to follow. The point are highly important because it factors into world rankings and seeding for the single knockout tournament (and curling could do with more knockout style bonspiels, at least double or triple knockouts anyway).

Golf is a little more like how curling is now with more emphasis on events and less on season long standings, but there still is emphasis on the money list and earning point to get to the season ending Tour Championship. There's a clear emphasis on the 4 majors, and even casual fans know what the focus is on.

Now Formula 1 is the opposite swing of the pendulum from golf in this comparison. While there is a goal each weekend to win the race, much more emphasis is placed on the season-long drivers' championship. Again, there are consistent points and clear goals. The best part is that there is an easy to follow season-long story arc.

I think the best model that curling should emulate is the tennis model. Have a select few events be "majors" (Grand Slams and elevate some European and Asian events... which would require Rogers to play ball, which is easier said than done), have a second tier (events that right now fill the weeks between Slams that might pay out $40-$60k), a third and fourth tier. There can be more than one event scheduled each week, as there is now (and as happens in tennis), so all the current events can stay. I, of course, realize that much of the tour scheduling and field of teams depends on the prize money right now, and I don't know how that all fits into this plan (because some tier 3 events would be more attractive to players than other tier 3 events, for example). But putting a pin in that issue, the whole season can lead towards a tour championship event in May, after the World Championships and perhaps after a last chance major event.

The point is that right now, there's no real stakes to the current professional curling season, other than winning one of a number of nearly identical events. There's nothing that makes the "Masters" any different than the "Canadian Open" and the "Tour Challenge", etc.

Perhaps with the merger of Tours, something like this is already being worked out. I'm not sure... I have no inside information. One can only hope. But as it stands right now, there needs to be some sort of season long narrative that relates one event to the next. Otherwise, it'll turn into casual fans simply saying, "Oh look, curling is on TV again. Nothing special about this."

I will say one thing about the merger that I do know. They got the new name and logo right. The World Curling Tour is the better name, but the Curling Champions Tour had the much better logo.