Club ResourcesBusiness of Curling

A stronger club, one practical step at a time

The Business
of Curling

Welcome people well. Make the most of your ice. Build an operation that can keep doing both.

A practical starting point for member-led clubs and commercial curling experiences. Choose your path, compare two sessions, and take one useful question to your next meeting.

Choose your starting pointTry the session calculator

An independent HouseCall guide. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Curling Canada, USA Curling, or World Curling.

01 · Choose your starting point

What are you building around?

These are two useful starting points, not rigid categories. Many curling operations borrow from both.

Belonging across a seasonMember & volunteer-led clubReliable play, returning members, and work people can sustain.Open the club path
  • Protect the league, practice, and social experience members have been promised.
  • Map a friendly route from a first lesson into suitable recurring play.
  • Use private events, instruction, and sponsors where they fit the calendar and team.
  • Record volunteer hours and give essential roles a backup.
  • Plan an operating surplus and future repairs, even if the club is nonprofit.

Start here: Ask which member experience you want to protect, and which job depends too heavily on one person.

A visit worth bookingCommercial experience centerClear booking, consistent instruction, and a repeatable guest experience.Open the experience path
  • Design an understandable timed experience, with equipment and instruction clearly described.
  • Cost the entire visit: inquiry, check-in, teaching, cleanup, and follow-up.
  • Schedule enough trained people and reset time to deliver it consistently.
  • Offer lessons, return visits, private groups, or stand-alone events. A weekly league is optional.
  • Measure local visitors, tourists, and corporate organizers separately.

Start here: Choose one audience and write the experience they can book in one clear sentence.

Using arena ice? Start with the time your agreement actually gives you. Include stone movement, storage, preparation, and any scheduling restrictions. A dedicated facility’s capacity assumptions may not fit.

02 · Give each offer a job

Build a useful income mix.

There is no universal ideal mix. Choose offers your audience wants and your people can deliver. Revenue alone does not show what an offer leaves to support the club.

Explore six income streams and their tradeoffs

Memberships & recurring play

Can anchor participation and advance cash. Be clear about included play and the peak-time capacity you are promising.

Beginner sessions & lessons

Create a first visit and a next step. Include instruction, equipment, and all preparation time in your delivery plan.

Private & corporate events

Package a whole group experience. Count sales administration, hosts, instructors, reset, and any hospitality costs.

Bonspiels & competitions

Give each event its own budget: ice, staffing, officials where needed, prizes, and hospitality. Check what regular play it displaces.

Sponsorship

Sell defined benefits for a defined term. Budget production and included sessions; record what you delivered and when renewal is due.

Food, rooms & merchandise

Work out the money left after delivery costs and who does the work. Confirm the venue’s local requirements with qualified help.

At your next meeting: For each current offer, name its audience, calendar slot, owner, delivery costs, and reason to keep it.

03 · Protect the whole booking block

Your ice has a working day, too.

One sheet-hour is one sheet reserved for one hour. A session uses more than its playing time when setup, reset, or ice maintenance also blocks that sheet.

PrepareWelcome & playReset the sheetReady for the next group

An illustrative sequence, not a timing or staffing standard. Check-in may happen off ice, but still needs people and space.

Make a bookable-capacity plan
  1. Mark opening hours, closures, ice preparation, and maintenance.
  2. Protect bookings and member access already promised.
  3. Match remaining sheet blocks with available trained staff or volunteers.
  4. Leave realistic setup and turnover buffers. Do not assume back-to-back groups will fit.
  5. Check equipment, reception, accessible routes, and warm-room space alongside ice capacity.

Keep the denominator honest: Track occupied sheet-hours against the hours you could safely staff and sell, using the same definition of blocked time. Separate peak and quieter periods.

Equipment reset: Assign someone to count and inspect returned brooms, grippers, sliders, and delivery aids; clean and dry items as appropriate to manufacturer guidance; remove damaged equipment from service. Confirm sizes and clean-footwear arrangements before guests arrive.

Use current Curling Canada safety guidance and qualified local support when designing your program. This guide supplies no participant-to-instructor safety ratio.

04 · Try the arithmetic

What does a session contribute?

Compare two sessions after their direct delivery costs. Then compare the contribution for every sheet-hour they block.

Contribution is not profit.

Money left here still has to help cover fixed overhead, repairs, financing, reserves, and your target surplus. This simple comparison is not a financial forecast or a test of business viability.

What to include in direct costs

Enter the total costs caused by delivering the whole session: paid preparation and teaching time, hosts, incremental ice preparation, consumables, processing fees, and ice hired for this session. Include paid cleanup and administration, too.

Do not enter the same cost twice. Keep standing costs such as base rent and ongoing salaried administration in your separate operating budget unless a cost is genuinely incremental to this session. Record volunteer hours separately, and rerun the comparison with a paid replacement cost if that would be needed.

Use the average amount retained per paying participant after discounts and refunds, excluding taxes collected for remittance. For a whole-group booking, divide its total session charge by the paying participants. This small tool omits other income; assess food, sponsorship, and room hire separately without reusing the same costs.

Use one currency throughout. The $ sign is a generic dollar label; no USD/CAD conversion is performed. All amounts must be in the same currency. The optional example is entirely fictional, not a price recommendation, cost benchmark, or staffing standard.

The interactive calculator needs JavaScript. You can still use the formulas below to compare your sessions on paper.

See the formulas and limits
  • Session receipts: price per participant × paying participants
  • Session contribution: receipts − direct costs for the whole session
  • Blocked sheet-hours: sheets × (session minutes + extra blocked minutes) ÷ 60
  • Contribution per blocked sheet-hour: contribution ÷ blocked sheet-hours

This assumes every reserved sheet is blocked for the same duration. If sheet blocks differ, calculate each separately. Zero participants and zero prices are allowed; sheets and session length must be positive. No tax, depreciation, loan-payment, cash-flow, or demand model is included. Keep a separate budget and get qualified advice for actual financial decisions.

05 · Make the next visit easy

A warm welcome needs a next step.

Before guests leave, show them one suitable thing they can do next. Measure return visits in a way that fits the visitor.

Choose a return path for each audience
New club participant
First experience → short coached program → suitable recurring play → skills and social opportunities.
Local experience-center visitor
First session → return with friends → lesson, clinic, practice, or a stand-alone event.
Tourist
A memorable visit and a way to find curling near home. A low short-term return rate may reflect travel, not a disappointing experience.
Corporate organizer
Clear booking → smooth delivery → useful feedback → an appropriate future invitation where communications are permitted.

Define a group and a time window before measuring return. For example, look at local first-time visitors who book again within a period you choose. Track member renewals and organizer repeat bookings separately; do not combine them into one retention rate.

Curling Ontario’s Adult Learn to Curl program connects instruction with customer experience, logistics, budgeting, and retention. Check current registration, eligibility, and fees.

06 · Make the work sustainable

Look after the people and the place.

A full calendar can hide an exhausted volunteer team or an unfunded repair. Put both on the agenda.

People, sponsors, and replacement planning

Give every job a backup

Name an owner and backup for ice, bookings, instruction, welcome, finance, equipment, and incident response. Make a short handover, train people, publish manageable shifts, and record unpaid hours. Confirm lawful staffing arrangements locally.

Keep sponsor promises specific

Record the asset, term, audience, production cost, included benefits, and renewal date. Use verified attendance, not inflated reach. North Halton’s sponsorship page is a public inventory example, not a price benchmark or an offer from HouseCall.

See the next repair coming

List important assets with condition, last service, next check, likely replacement window, current quote, and funding plan. Review major replacements separately from this month’s bank balance.

Watch a small scorecard

Review attendance, blocked sheet use, contribution by offer, audience-specific return visits, unfilled shifts, equipment issues, and cash needs. Use consistent definitions and your own baseline.

Bring this to your next meeting

One block. One audience. One test.

Choose a quieter block you can safely staff. Plan one offer, run it, and compare what happened with what you expected.

  1. Name the visitor. Who is this for, and what can they book?
  2. Reserve the whole block. What ice, people, equipment, and reset time are needed?
  3. Write down the costs. What remains after delivery, and what must that money still cover?
  4. Agree on the review. Who owns the test, what will you measure, and when will you decide what to change?

No universal occupancy target or growth promise is needed. Start with records, realistic capacity, and one useful decision.

Go deeper with the people who support clubs

Official resources & real examples

This guide is original HouseCall material informed by the public sources linked here. External resources belong to their publishers; access, availability, and charges can change.

Public overview · services may have fees

Curling Canada: Business of Curling

The official club-development program, including exclusive information, symposiums, and strategic-planning support. Check membership eligibility and fees; it is not an all-free resource library.

Public introduction · member access

USA Curling: Our House & Member Hub

Our House access requires current membership. Some groups or content need additional eligibility, certifications, or upgrades.

Public hub · facility planning

World Curling: Facilities

Start here for facility strategy, technical resources, and case studies. Check local conditions before applying another facility’s assumptions.

Public descriptions · check course terms

USA Curling: Member Programs

Instructor, ice-technician, and other development routes. Confirm current eligibility, schedules, and charges with the provider.

Additional source context: Curling Canada’s club-development work. Operational examples and safety, teaching, and sponsorship sources are linked beside their relevant sections above. Reviewed October 10, 2026.

For actual operations, confirm local insurance, accessibility, safeguarding, employment, food and alcohol, tax, customer terms, and facility requirements with appropriate professionals. Linked resources are guidance, not permission to reuse another organization’s manuals, forms, photos, or logos.

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