Contemporary Brier attempts to achieve a difficult balance between its history and evolving game.
For the most of its nearly 100-year history, the men’s curling championship representing Canadian Confederation was a provincial and territorial competition. Today, it is a hybrid, with teams from different provinces participating in it in wildly different ways.
Nolan Thiessen, the new chief executive officer of Curling Canada and a former Canadian and world curling champion, argues that both the Brier and the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the Canadian women’s curling championship, need to tread carefully when it comes to competition and marketing.
“I always explain it to the Scotties and the Brier as something that has to serve a few masters and people,” Thiessen remarked. “It cannot consist solely of entertainment and marketing. It is not possible for it to be a perfect high performance.
