Latest news with #Sulsky
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
With new Rock League, curling is latest Olympic sport to get professional boost
It's November 2024 in Nisku, Alberta, and Scottish curler Bruce Mouat is having an important hotel meeting. Mention curling and Mouat, 30, is often brought up. He's the world No. 1 in the men's rankings. A two-time world champion and a silver medalist at the 2022 Beijing Olympics. These accomplishments have Mouat seated across from Canadian Olympic gold medalist curlers John Morris and Jennifer Jones, discussing a historic moment for the sport. Advertisement Mouat will be one of the inaugural team captains in the world's first professional curling league, called Rock League. It sounded 'almost too good to be true,' according to Mouat. But on Thursday, Rock League launched to the world. Mouat will captain one of six global franchise teams, with an equal gender split (five men, five women). The other five captains are three-time world champion Rachel Homan (Canada), 2014 Olympic gold medalist Brad Jacobs (Canada), six-time world champion Alina Pätz (Switzerland), 2022 Olympic silver medalist Chinami Yoshida (Japan), and 2023 world mixed doubles champion Korey Dropkin (United States). The league is scheduled to begin in April 2026, two months after the Milan-Cortina Olympics. The season will span six weeks, consisting of multiformat curling bonspiels — the term for a curling tournament — with plans for events in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. Rock League's goal is to elevate curling's place in the global sports landscape with world-class competition. 'Just so excited to have something like this within our sport,' Mouat said. 'It was a complete honor getting asked to be captain. I was buzzing.' Rock League is operated by The Curling Group, a sports business venture created by Nic Sulsky, a Toronto-based entrepreneur who was in the meeting with Mouat last November. Sulsky didn't grow up a curler. The first bonspiel Sulsky attended was in April 2022. But for him, that event began a love affair with curling. A seismic granite shift is coming #LetsRock — Grand Slam of Curling (@grandslamcurl) April 23, 2025 Sulsky was the former CCO of PointsBet, a gambling company that sponsored Curling Canada events and curling teams. This is how Sulsky met Morris, who was a member of two-time world champion Kevin Koe's team. When Sulsky and Morris drove to London, Ontario, for the 2023 Canadian men's national curling championships, known as the Brier, Sulsky pitched the idea of a professional curling league to the Olympian. Advertisement 'I'm like, 'Johnny, do you think curlers would ever support and participate in a pro league where it's built and run like an actual professional sport?'' Sulsky said. 'And he was like, 'Yeah, they would absolutely go for that.'' It was that car ride where Sulsky believed that a professional curling league could be possible. Sulsky knew he was an outsider in the curling world and needed people with experience and gravitas in the sport to be involved in launching the league. He made Morris and Jones strategic advisors, who eventually attended the meeting with Mouat last November in Nisku. Sulsky credits Morris and Jones for getting world-class curlers on board with Rock League. 'They know what it's like to be a curler,' Sulsky said. 'They were two of the greatest ever to play. Having them involved in this, having them alongside me in a lot of these conversations, helps communicate this idea to the curlers in a way that they know.' In the summer of 2023, The Curling Group acquired The Grand Slam of Curling, a series of events formerly included in the World Curling Tour, from Rogers Sportsnet in Canada. This was the impetus to launch Rock League. The Grand Slam of Curling events — which include the Masters, Canadian Open, The National, the Players' and Tour Challenge — will still operate alongside Rock League and attract curlers from around the world, according to Sulsky. These take place in the fall, winter and spring, with the national championships and worlds sandwiched in between. Sulsky believes these events will grow with a professional league under The Curling Group's umbrella. 'In order for curlers to actually get to a point in their careers where they don't need a second job to support their family, the thing that the sport needs is an injection of capital,' Sulsky said. 'Our No. 1 objective is we want to make these curlers into stars, and I think the best way to do that is to create a platform for them to become stars. And that's why you actually need a proper professional sport.' Advertisement The next 12 months are busy for Sulsky and Mouat. For Mouat, preparing for a chance to win Olympic gold in Milan-Cortina. For Sulsky, bringing Rock League to life. According to Sulsky, the business model for Rock League is similar to other sports leagues: revenue streams from sponsors and media/broadcast rights to event ticket sales, hospitality, merchandise, sports data, gambling and branded digital content across various platforms. There will be different formats at the events, similar to the Ryder and Solheim Cups in golf, but Sulsky stresses that it will be the first mixed gender professional team sport. Locations, formats, purses, dates, team names and broadcast details will be announced in the coming months. Mouat believes Rock League will continue curling's momentum from the Olympics, similar to how Grand Slam Track is trying to do the same for that sport. 'It's not something we've seen in our sport,' Mouat said. 'We've not had a professional league, and having the opportunity to play with people that you've had as rivals or competitors over the last maybe eight to 10 years, and now potentially being your teammates.' There are 74 curling associations within the World Curling Federation. Over a million curlers worldwide are registered to play in leagues. With Thursday's announcement, curling is the latest Olympic event to have a professional league, injecting excitement and innovation into the granite game. (Top photo of Bruce Mouat competing during the 2022 Beijing Olympics: Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Cuss Fuss: Grand Slam boss says he has no intention of banning on-ice swearing
The rather genteel world of curling can sometimes be jolted by the odd swear word that makes it on bonspiel broadcasts via player microphones. It's something that The Curling Group CEO Nic Sulsky says comes with the territory of elite competition. "I don't promote it, but at the same time, sports are fun and sports are emotional," he said. "It's 2025." The subject of potty-mouthed athletes has been a talking point of late in Formula One circles. Under new rules, drivers could be suspended or lose championship points for swearing or making political statements. The measures, published by the governing body FIA, apply to misconduct, which has a wide definition that includes offensive language. The subject of swearing in the Roaring Game — one of the few sports where athletes are mic'd — was renewed when Sulsky posted a link on X, the website formerly known as Twitter, to a story that detailed the F1 developments. "I'd like to alleviate the concern of players in @grandslamcurl that @thecurlinggroup has NO intention of banning swearing," Sulsky said in the post, which included curling stone, middle finger and laughing face emojis. Team Mike McEwen vice Colton Flasch, a regular on the Grand Slam circuit that's owned by The Curling Group, was quick to reply. "LFG!!!!!," Flasch posted. Mic'd-up curlers provide viewers with unparalleled insight into the game, strategy and thought processes. But since broadcasts are live, curse words can make it to air at events like the Grand Slams or national and world championships. "Sports, especially competitive sports, are high stakes. People have lots of investment of time and self-worth in the outcome of those events," said Ben Bergen, the author of "What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves." "Those sorts of highly emotional situations are exactly the types of places that we tend to see people feeling the most prone to swear." However, for a generally staid curling audience that skews heavily on the older side — some spectators bring their knitting to the arena — a cuss word can be as jarring as a big-weight takeout. "I will never be angry with a curler who happens to drop an F-bomb or (swears) if they personally screw up," Sulsky said from Toronto. "Like, if it's about them, that's where most of the swearing goes down. If a curler wants to look at a curler and say something derogatory or a swear word in their direction, which is clearly different intent, that's a different story altogether. "I'm not cool with that. At the end of the day, we have young kids watching. But it's also 2025." Sportsnet is the host broadcaster for the five-stop Grand Slam series. Curling Canada's top events, like the upcoming Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Montana's Brier, are shown on TSN. A Curling Canada spokesman confirmed curler fines have been issued during this quadrennial, without providing specifics. Team payouts at events are subject to deductions — believed to be somewhere in the $500 range — when necessary. Organization CEO Nolan Thiessen said there's a section in competitor guides that outlines how athletes can be fined for conduct code violations like swearing. "There is some leeway that our head officials give to the fact that we are wearing live mics playing a highly competitive sport on national television," Thiessen said. "We do understand that there are times where things happen. "We talk to the athletes all the time there's people that don't like that. There's some people that do like it." It wasn't immediately clear why broadcasters don't use a delay to ensure that unexpected occurrences — such as salty language — don't make it to air. "When the stakes are very high or when the emotions are running strong, those are the situations when it's more socially licensed to swear," said Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. "As a result, people might be filtering themselves a little bit less in those circumstances." A Sportsnet spokesman said "there are no plans" to use a delay. A message left with TSN was not immediately returned. "The biggest thing is the CRTC standards," Thiessen said in a recent interview in Calgary. "That's the thing we don't want to get in trouble with. If you are getting fines from them or you start getting pulled from television, then we've got a lot of people to answer to." Sulsky said he has not had conversations with the Sportsnet production team regarding athlete swearing. "No one is promoting the use of curse words," he said. "I just think this is a unique scenario where all the athletes are mic'd and these are humans in 2025." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 6, 2025. With files from Canadian Press sports reporter Donna Spencer in Calgary. Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press
