Toronto Brier

Toronto Brier

With the Player's Championship being held in Toronto next week, expect the curling media to jump on the story of curling in Toronto and more specifically, whether Toronto should host a Brier or Scotties championship.

There is a lot of pros, but there is a lot of cons as well. It will be interesting to see whether Toronto could host a major curling championship.

 I am not exactly breaking new ground, as Don Landry has gone here before.

Toronto is a big-league town. People won't bat an eye at paying outrageous prices for Toronto Raptors, Toronto Blue Jays and especially Toronto Maple Leaf tickets.

However, fans don't flock to junior hockey in Toronto, as the St. Mikes, Mississauga and Brampton franchises will tell you, as two of the three Toronto franchises have left town for North Bay and Niagara, and if rumours are to be believed, expect the third OHL team to head out to heaven-on-earth, or as I call it, Chatham.

Even the CFL's Argos have attendance issues, as they can only fill up the Stadium Formerly Known as Skydome to less than half capacity. The Buffalo Bills however, despite being a horrible team and having little ties to Toronto, can just about fill up the Skydome/Rogers Centre.

The difference is that the NFL, along with the NBA and NHL are considered A-list products.
The CFL and junior hockey and (sigh) yes, curling, are considered B-level products. A Brier, from an attendance standpoint, would probably be a disaster, which would be a shame.

Saying that, it will be interesting to see how Toronto treats next week's Players Championships being held at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.

I hope the curling die-hards, and there are tons in Toronto, make their way downtown to watch some curling.

It will be interesting to see how the Toronto media treat having a major curling event in their own backyard. I assume most of the major players will ignore the Players Championship, other than a small story at the beginning of the week, with the Brier speculation, and then ignore it the rest of the week. If TSN shows highlights in minute 57 of Sportscentre I will be impressed.

I also expect the morning talk show types to do a preview-type segment. If you've seen them once you've seen them a million times,--morning host comes down, gives curling a try, yuk it up for a bit and then says "this is much harder than it looks."

Would they do that with baseball or hockey? Nah, it's an A-list event. Can't make fun of that.