Image source @ Visual China
Text | Kasumitsu Society, author | Guo Zhaochuan, Editor | Magi
After the men's curling round robin tournament of the Japanese Winter Olympics on February 16, the term "gentlemanly demeanor of the Chinese men's curling team" rushed to the hot search.
On the same day, the Chinese curling team played against the Swiss team in the game, and when they entered the final set, there was a "touch of the pot" incident on the field. The Swiss athlete's foot touched the curling, and the Chinese team, which was 4:5 behind, could have chosen to void the curling pot, but the whole team discussed and decided to keep it as it was. In the end, the Chinese team still won this game with strength.
Captain Ma Xiuyue said in an interview after the game: "At that time, we didn't see the opponent touch the pot... Curling is a gentleman's sport, and we don't make such decisions just because we're good for ourselves. ”
Source: People's Daily Sports Weibo
Curling, such a "gentleman's sport", has received a lot of attention at this Winter Olympics.
As the opening match of the Winter Olympic Games, the curling group stage began before the official opening of the Winter Olympics, and the Chinese team got the "opening red" on the first match day, which greatly encouraged everyone's emotions.
In addition, the Chinese curling team has also frequently "gone out of the circle" on social media with a very high appearance, which is called "male handsome and female beauty" and "extra eye-catching" by the audience, and some fans even made rescue posters for male curling team members. Star athletes such as "Curling Drag King" and "Curling Yan King" further deepened the audience's love for this ice and snow sport.
The Winter Olympics led to the "ice and snow fever", and curling, which was originally a niche sport, also entered the public eye.
According to CCTV Financial Report, searches about curling have risen by 310% since January this year. There are more than 7 hot searches on Weibo for curling mixed doubles to fight against different countries, and more than 10,000 curling-related notes on the Little Red Book.
In Beijing, Shanghai and other domestic first-tier cities, novel curling has become the favorite of some young people, many companies will organize employees to go to curling centers to participate in team building, and there are also parents with their children to participate in the curling experience.
Under the heat of the Winter Olympics, has the curling industry really entered the "fast lane"? In the long run, can the problems of curling venue, funds, and chinese people's awareness be solved? Can it develop into an emerging mass sport, or even a "net red" sport like skiing?
01 "It's too hard to experience real curling once"
"It's so hard for individual customers to experience a curling hand!" Li Yuan, a post-90s worker living in Beijing, made this exclamation after several attempts to make time for the curling arena.
After watching several consecutive Winter Olympic curling games at home, Li Yuan became interested in this sport that was very "Sven".
She had wanted to have a curling hall with her boyfriend, but it turned out that playing a regular curling game in Beijing was not as easy as she thought.
One is because the selectivity of the curling venue is too narrow; the second is that the consumption of curling is too high, and a single person can only play for more than an hour for hundreds of pieces; the third is that it is particularly unfriendly to individual customers, and it will feel a little awkward to temporarily fight with other teams.
Searching for "curling hall" on a local life APP, almost all the top rankings are dryland curling projects planned by companies. There are only two or three curling halls in Beijing that can truly realize "ice sports", and one is in the far-reaching Huairou area.
The difficulty of curling halls does not affect the enthusiasm of young people who want to experience curling. At the invitation of his friends, Deng Yunan played a game of ice hockey with everyone.
"It's real ice, and the experience is not bad." Deng Yunan told Xiaguang She. "The price is 399 yuan / person for an hour and a half, and the 4 of us spent about 1600 yuan, which also includes the accident insurance we bought on Taobao." The whole venue is very standardized at first glance, and I heard that there will be professional teams to train here. Deng Yunan said that this accident insurance is required by merchants to buy, in order to prevent the possible risks of ice and snow high-speed sports.
Although spending more than 1600 yuan to play curling seems to be expensive, compared to the expenses of other netizens, Deng Yunan feels that it is worth it. Some netizens said that their curling team building of 7 to 8 people cost a total of more than 4,000 yuan.
Deng Yunan said that although the curling hall is almost the best venue in Beijing, there are still many irregularities. For example, the curling fee booked on the same day needs to be transferred in full on WeChat in advance. This made him feel uneasy: after all, the cost of curling venues is not low, and if there are special circumstances on the day, whether it is possible to face a situation that cannot be refunded. In addition, the shoes and helmets provided by the venue are reused, and although there are disposable socks, disinfection and hygiene problems are still worrying.
Since Deng Yunan was a group to play curling, the process was relatively smooth. There are also comments on the Internet that if a single individual goes by himself, he also needs to fight with other teams.
From these perspectives, the current curling venue is more suitable for group participation than for individual experience, and the higher price will also greatly raise the threshold for young people to experience the curling hall.
Therefore, although the passenger flow of curling venues has increased several times before and after the Winter Olympics, like skiing, it has become a fun, petty bourgeoisie and novel entertainment activity that attracts young people, but this does not mean that curling will usher in an explosive opportunity.
In addition, for merchants, curling still has many difficulties in promotion. For example, the cost of setting up the venue is high, the publicity of curling sports is not enough, the passenger flow is insufficient, and so on.
A curling field that meets the rules needs to be a very flat ice track that is 44.5 meters long and 4.32 meters wide. Because of the high demands on the ice surface, the construction of such an ice channel requires pure distilled water. In addition, refrigeration equipment under the ice surface, other liquids added to distilled water, will increase the cost of the ice channel.
Curling for competitions is more expensive. Strictly speaking, hand-built high-end curling is monopolized by three overseas companies, Scottish Case Company, Canadian Curling Stone Company and Thompson Company of the United States. Domestically made curling can basically only be called "simulated curling".
Curling used in international competitions cost more than 12,000 yuan, and the total price of 16 curling pots in the whole field exceeded 180,000 yuan. In the mass market, the market price of an ordinary curling is also more than 10,000 yuan, which is not a small investment for curling halls. Coupled with the limited passenger flow, it has squeezed the profit space of the curling venue.
02 Folk "low match": how hot is dryland hockey?
Since the price of professional curling is so high, many people have come up with simple alternatives. As a result, "homemade curling" and "dryland curling" came into being.
For curling, which is now very popular on the Internet, an old Beijinger said: "This is a foreign sport, when we were children, we all threw briquettes on the ice." ”
This kind of "coal ball on ice" may be the original model of folk low-grade curling.
Not long ago, there was a Mr. Sun in Inner Mongolia who made a batch of curling pots with ice cubes, known as "not spending a penny", which was called "the ceiling of folk curling" by netizens. He used a shovel to make a curling shape, punched holes with an electric drill, and installed a homemade curling handle. He spent three hours making a set of curling and immediately trying it on the ice.
This Mr. Sun finally did not hold back, and kicked the curling pot into the red heart. It was also pointed out by netizens that it did not meet the regulations: "Ah, do not bring feet, foul punishment." "Although this kind of folk curling game does not follow the rules, it also makes players gain unlimited fun.
In addition to the "curling" chiseled out of real ice, folk homemade curling can also be realized with boiling water teapots, steamers, aluminum pots, etc., with mops to "brush a brush", while also mopping the floor to do housework.
However, it is more widely used in the market, which is a relatively low-demand dryland curling, also known as innovative curling, mainly used in company team building, school unified organization of activities, outward training and other occasions.
Dryland curling does not require real ice, and the ice path used for better dryland curling is built by polymer simulation ice boards, and the experience is only slightly inferior to real ice. It is good to be able to achieve no restrictions on the venue and temperature, and it does not have to be like a real curling hall, which always needs to ensure the specific temperature and humidity in the venue. In this kind of venue team building, it is advertised as "high-end light luxury team building".
A little rougher dryland curling, the ice track is more roughly paved, the friction is also larger, more like a small game that everyone can play. In addition, the board game challenge mini-game transformed by the principle of curling has also become a new favorite for team building and gathering.
At present, on the major group buying websites, the group building merchants of dryland curling can show more than a dozen in a search, almost more than ten times that of traditional curling venues.
Their curling team building activities are priced between 60 yuan and 200 yuan, and dryland curling often appears in conjunction with other team building expansion projects, and the average purchase volume varies from dozens of orders, which is much more than traditional curling. The rules for this type of dryland curling are the same as those for real curling, but the risk and speed of the ice surface are significantly reduced.
Image source: Weibo
This type of curling also suffers from a reduction in production quality, significantly reducing production costs. The weight of curling in international competitions is 19.6 kg, while the dryland curling is only 10.5 kg, which is divided into two types: bearing and bearingless. Such dryland curling, domestic curling manufacturers themselves can produce, without the origin of European granite, the price is also much cheaper.
Yang Fei, who has just organized the company's team-built dryland hockey game, said that such curling is also very fun. "Such curling is a good layout of the venue, everyone is easy to master, and feel fresh, the key is to reflect teamwork and negotiation tactics, especially suitable for team building."
Compared with professional curling training venues, dryland curling is indeed easier to do popular promotion and achieve profitability. But it also loses the experience of the "high-end niche" sport that comes with curling itself.
03 Curling, can you seize the opportunity of the "Winter Olympics"?
Compared with the "snubbed" curling, skiing, which is also a derivative sport of the Winter Olympics, has been more recognized and loved by the public in recent years.
Choosing high-end, bright snowsuits, buying expensive snowboards, catching up on the road to skiing abroad and a few days of hotel expenses, people spend several times more money on skiing than curling. The same is ice and snow sports, why can't curling be like skiing, become a circle of friends "social currency" representing the high-end life and fashion experience of modern young people?
In fact, curling is no less entertaining and enjoyable than skiing.
Curling is called "ice chess" precisely because it combines physical and mental exercise. When you actually participate in a curling game, you will find that although there is no fierce physical confrontation on the field, the process is just as exciting. The slightest difference makes people nervously clench their fists, which is really an addictive exercise.
The unique "brain-teasing" trait of curling has to do with its rules: the ultimate goal is, of course, to get your camp's curling closer to the red center of the camp. However, due to the mutual collision between the two sides of the curling, the scene is changing rapidly, and the position occupied by the curling at the moment is likely to be squeezed out in the next round. This makes it necessary for both teams to form strategies and tactics, where the brainpower required for planning back and forth is comparable to that of playing chess.
In addition to the strategy on the ice track, curling can also meet the essence of physical fitness exercise. From the power of the skater to the foot of the curling, to the grasp of the strength to push to the right distance and direction, the athlete's waist, large and small legs must exert force. This makes curling athletes look very gentlemanly, but they can also exercise their muscles and achieve the purpose of exercise.
Moreover, curling competition requires a lot of communication and collaboration, which is conducive to communication and conversation between the two sides. Coupled with the natural "niche" and "aristocratic" labels of curling, if properly promoted, it can also become a high-end sport that can benchmark "ice golf", and has the potential to develop into an Internet celebrity sport.
The Winter Olympics gave curling enough heat, but the curling hall seemed to have missed the opportunity again.
Whether it is in the preparation of publicity and marketing before the Winter Olympics, or in the process of the Winter Olympics, the reaction rate and service efficiency of the curling hall after the sport is ignited are more or less lagging and insufficient.
Taking the ice hockey halls in Beijing as an example, the current two venues have rushed to the top ten of the list of popular sports venues with the popularity of the Winter Olympics. Although the venues are "hot", the overall rating is not high, and the two venues are only 3.9 and 4.1 respectively, which is still far from the 4.9 points that other top-ranked sports venues, such as ski halls and surf halls, can get.
The curling venues do not have high ratings, mainly due to the fact that the venues are old, the service is not in place, and so on. Some customers left messages in the comment area saying that "no one received after arriving at the venue", "the price is not cheap", "it is not interesting to have fewer people", which are the reasons for the low rating.
Prior to the Winter Olympics, the number of curling venues themselves was limited, scattered only in a few cities in the north and first-tier cities. Although the number of curling halls has increased compared with previous years, and new forms of participation such as curling experience bases and curling clubs have emerged, in the final analysis, the fundamentals are still too small.
Another reason why curling hasn't taken off is that marketing and service thinking hasn't kept up. Posting your own curling experience on social media is undoubtedly a very compelling share. However, due to the fact that the curling venue itself has too little publicity, the management method is very traditional, and the venue is relatively simple and not conducive to taking photos and punching cards, so there has never been a trend.
It could have taken advantage of the "east wind" of the Winter Olympics to become a hot Internet celebrity lifestyle among young people. Unfortunately, the real problems in the curling industry make it impossible to seize the opportunity. The development of domestic mass curling is temporarily difficult to enter the fast lane.