[Derek Sutton]

So having a little insight into what goes into hosting a Brier I'd like to share some of what I've learned and how everything shakes down. It is a 3 year journey, here in Lethbridge we have been down this road before. We are the only city to host The Scotties, Women's Worlds, Men's Worlds, World Mixed Doubles and a Brier. They've all been fairly recent, within the last 15 years or so. Of course the Brier is the "Big One" which was a goal of the Lethbridge Curling Club dating back to 2010, we have worked our way up the ladder to become Brier hosts.

Curling Canada makes the rules and the hosts follow them. They lay out what is required by the host city, host committees and community. They make demands such as rent free facilities for two weeks, in our case the use of the Enmax Center for games and the Soccer center next door for the Patch and other events. They put demands on volunteer hours, limit volunteer numbers, charge them $100 each and expect many of them take the week off of work in exchange for unlimited event admission and bottomless Tim Hortons coffee.

Curling Canada is also the lone beneficiary of event ticket sales, $8 cans of beer in the Patch and all merchandise. They do have costs as well, they treat their title sponsors to 3 full catered meals a day, drinks, coffee, snacks and treats daily, and tickets, tickets, tickets. They contract out much of the work and being involved in some of the contract bidding I nearly crapped my pants on some of the quotes. They have a handful of paid employees, some being permanent while many being on short term contracts. This event would no come close to happening however without the 200 or so volunteers and some 6000 or so volunteer hours. From ice crew to servers to officials and time keepers, volunteers are behind some of the most crucial and some of the most insignificant tasks required to put an event like this together.

Having said all this you may ask why would any city bid to host this event? The economic spin off to the host city is fairly immeasurable, hence the rent free use of facilities. The benefit to us and the curling club is all 50/50 proceeds, we are (conservatively) anticipating $150,000 in revenue from the 50/50 draws, impossible to raise this much money any other way.