Tuesday, October 11, 2005

The Black Book in B.C.

TCN partner CurlingZone, specifically Dallas Bittle of Calgary, was in Vancouver over the holiday, on contract with the Allied Westcoast Classic Tour stop on the Ultima World Curling Tour.

Dallas was brought in to help the local organizing committee run a sparkling new event website, focussing on realtime results. He reports the site scored over 850,000 page views, which is a high number for a non-Slam or non-CCA event.

Question: when’s the last time you heard about a contractor being hired to run a cashspiel website? This truly is the dawn of a new curling era.

While there, Dallas talked up his new book, The Black Book of Curling, and even managed to sell two boxes on site.

Four copies were purchased by Kevin Martin, on behalf of his team (photo). Later, during a game, Martin couldn’t resist gabbing with Dallas on ice – right in the middle of the match – about the new statistics CurlingZone has pioneered and which feature heavily in the new 300-page tome. The eventual spiel champion – his squad beat Toronto's Mike Harris in the final in a battle of the previous two Olympic silver medallists – Martin also ordered a couple of crates for his curling shop in Edmonton.

Other competitors, like Vancouver’s Brent Pierce, offered continuing support. “Just tell us what we can do and we’ll do it,” Pierce told Dallas. “This is great for the sport and we’ll support it.”

At this point, it’s very simple... go to the Black Book website and purchase your copy today. Along with a subscription to The Curling News, this is the best way to show your support.

1 comment:

Dean Gemmell said...

Great to see Dallas was in New Westminster. It was easy to follow the results at curlingzone.

Curling can spend all its time battling the mainstream media for space or save some energy for micromedia efforts. Mainstream media is struggling anyway and it's easier than ever before to get an audience without it. Let's make curling the under-served sport that creates more attention by having the best online coverage.