Brier attendance bordering on a disaster

It appears the folks in the Kamloops area don't want to see the biggest curling event in the land. 

According to Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press, attendance at the Tim Hortons Brier is a disaster with only around 2,500 folks a draw coming out to watch Stoughton, Koe and good old Eddie Mackenzie. That's less than 

Just 10,427 fans attended the first four draws on Saturday and Sunday, an average of just 2,607 per draw for an event that averaged over 9,000 per draw last year in Edmonton. 

While organizers say ticket sales are better for the final weekend of this event, it's already abundantly clear this is almost certainly going to go down as the worst-attended Brier since just 45,220 turned up in Chicoutimi, Que. in 1988.

What's strange about this is that a) as Wiecek points out it comes after all the excitement of curling at the Olympics and b) that even the guy who has put on about the last 100 Briers, Warren Hansen doesn't know why there are so few bums in the seats.

"But I'm stymied on this. We needed to sell at least 4,000 seats a draw to make this work and I never thought that would be a challenge -- the Brier hasn't been in B.C. for 20 years, the economy here is pretty good, it's the right demographic. 

"It should have worked. Why it hasn't? It's a mystery to me." 

This comes on the heels of the Montreal Scotties where the attendance averaged about 1,500 a draw. Although that was expected, coming in La Belle Province which is not exactly a boom town for curling.

Still, you wonder how these two events back to back will hurt the CCA's coffers.