Arena curling

Prior to around 2000, most Curling clubs in the United States followed the traditional Canadian model, operating in private facilities on dedicated ice sheets. When curling was introduced to a wider American audience during the 2002 Winter Olympics, interest in the sport grew dramatically. With the huge and sudden influx of new curlers, many existing curling clubs quickly filled. In addition, there developed strong interest in curling where there had never been before, in seemingly unlikely warm climates such as California, Arizona and Texas.

The intense capital investment needed to buy or build new private ice facilities was a significant obstacle to the development of new curling clubs in the United States. Instead, many fledgling curling clubs have solved this problem by operating in traditional arena ice facilities, renting ice by the hour and sharing ice sheets with skating sports such as hockey and figure skating.

The major advantage of arena curling is the ability to form a new curling club without the burden of buying or building a private ice facility. New curling clubs can rent only the ice time they need, reducing their start up costs and risk. This model also is good for club growth, assuming the hosting ice arena has sufficiently available ice to allow the curling club to buy more ice time as it expands.

Locating in an existing ice center also offers visibility to new curling clubs, since there is often other foot traffic in the building at the same time as curling for skating sports such as hockey and figure skating. Curling clubs playing on arena ice also enjoy the relative security of a fixed costs, without the need to plan for or budget variable costs for building maintenance and utilities.

The major challenge in arena curling is ice quality. Since the ice is shared with skaters and is maintained by large ice resurfacing machines, it can be difficult to maintain a perfectly flat sheet of ice, which is necessary for curling. Additionally, ice temperature is a problem for many arena clubs, especially in warmer climates. Ice that is cold enough for skating might not be cold enough for curling. Colder ice is more expensive for the ice facility to maintain. Curling clubs that develop a close relationship with the ice center staff in their hosting arena have the best success at developing quality curling ice under these settings. This challenge is overcomable with some effort however, as evidenced by the fact that many curling clubs in Scotland (the home of curling) operate on arena ice.

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Wikipedia