The Curling Group -TCG- has launched a search for $25 million in a Series A round to finance the growth of Rock League, the sport’s first professional league, in a process backed by a Wall Street bank and expected to close before the summer, according to SportBusiness. The first showcase for that fundraising effort will come from April 6 to 12 in Toronto, at the TMU Mattamy Athletic Centre, where the new competition will stage an initial seven-day edition that was brought forward from the original plan in order to capitalise on the Olympic momentum created by Milano Cortina 2026.

The move goes beyond a straightforward financing round. TCG is trying to do in curling what other private operators have pursued in niche sports with international prestige: turn a discipline with strong Olympic legitimacy into a more profitable, more global product that is better suited to entertainment, digital distribution and sponsorship. That does not mean displacing World Curling, which still retains institutional control of the sport and has confirmed a major overhaul of its competition structure for the 2026-2030 cycle, with the men’s and women’s World Championships expanding from 13 to 18 teams, the creation of B and C divisions, the continuation of the European A division and changes to junior competition. What is now emerging is another layer, commercial and audiovisual, that can coexist with the official one and broaden curling’s international reach.

The Curling Group is building a commercial structure curling did not have

In April 2024, TCG bought the Grand Slam of Curling from Sportsnet, owned by Rogers Sports & Media, in a deal that also handed it the series’ global rights and a property already established at the elite level of the sport. Months later, it announced an initial $5 million seed round led by Relay Ventures, and subsequent information places total seed capital at $11.3 million, after almost $7 million was used to acquire the circuit and another $4.5 million to modernise the property and lay the foundations for Rock League. Behind the project are figures from media, investment and sports business such as Nic Sulsky, Mike Cotton, Maryann Turcke, John Albright, John Kawaja and Nicole Musicco, alongside investors and advisors including Jared Allen, George Kittle, T.J. Hockenson, John Morris and Jennifer Jones.

On top of that base, TCG has assembled a full package of assets: the Grand Slam of Curling itself, the direct-to-consumer platform Rock Channel, content and merchandising properties, and now a global franchise league. The company says that over the last season Rock Channel streaming grew by 168%, web traffic doubled to more than 2 million users and social impressions rose by 230%. The Grand Slam also secured the highest number of international broadcast partners in its history, added its first linear partner in the United States, FanDuel Sports Network, and drew 316,000 viewers for the women’s final of KIOTI GSOC Tahoe on Sportsnet, making it one of the most-watched broadcasts in Canada that day alongside NHL and NFL programming. At the same time, Rock Channel launched in September 2025 as a global hub for live coverage, archives and original content, with the ambition of becoming a permanent destination for curling fans.

Rock League launches as a mixed-gender league and another way to experience curling

The new competition is designed to accelerate that strategy even further. Rock League will begin with six franchises: two from Canada (Maple United and Shield Curling Club), two from Europe (Northern United and Alpine Curling Club), one from the United States (Frontier Curling Club) and one from Asia-Pacific (Typhoon Curling Club). Each team will have 10 players, five men and five women, in what the organisation presents as a mixed-gender, global professional league. All of the initial franchises are currently owned by TCG, but the plan presented to potential investors foresees selling teams or stakes to private groups from 2028 onward, when the company expects to have as many as 10 franchises in operation, not all of them necessarily under private ownership.

The product itself is also being packaged differently. Nic Sulsky has said that Rock League wants to look and feel different from traditional curling at World Championships or Olympic Games, with a model closer to live entertainment: a Fan Fest, live music and “sheet side” seating beside the ice, similar to courtside seating in basketball, with a bar installed between sheets to bring fans physically closer to the players. The logic is clear: this is not just about broadcasting matches, but about redesigning the experience so it becomes more attractive to broadcasters, sponsors and host cities. In that framework, Iris Sport Media is advising TCG on the international sale of rights for both the Grand Slam and Rock League, while Red Tiger, founded by former Manchester United executives Richard Arnold and Laurence Miller, is leading the new league’s commercial and franchise strategy.

Players, broadcasters and brands are finding new incentives outside the official circuit

The shift also affects player incentives. In the official ecosystem, athletes compete mainly for ranking points, titles, prize money and Olympic prestige, while the model being built by TCG adds potential fees, more exposure, a more developed athlete-brand narrative and a commercial machine designed so that an athlete’s value does not depend only on an Olympic appearance or a world championship. The company itself links that opportunity to the data it identified after Milano Cortina 2026: more than 53% of all online curling engagement during the first Olympic week originated in the United States, and the mixed doubles silver medal run of Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse generated attention peaks comparable to sports moments in major markets. Both will now compete for Frontier Curling Club, and the rest of the athletes from the Olympic mixed doubles gold-medal match have also joined the league, directly connecting Olympic visibility with the new professional product.

That leap is also backed by a distribution and monetisation network already taking shape. CBC Sports will exclusively stream more than 40 hours of live Rock League 2026 coverage in Canada across its digital platforms, with three matches on national television — the playoffs, semi-finals and final — and the company is said to be close to finalising a non-exclusive global streaming agreement alongside several territorial deals. In parallel, the Grand Slam of Curling remains a high-level circuit with five Canadian stops for the 2026-27 season, new qualification routes through satellite events and premium competitions such as the Crown Royal Players’ Championship, which offers a combined purse of $480,000 and features 12 men’s teams and 12 women’s teams based on ranking. At the same time, World Curling continues reshaping the official ecosystem while TCG expands its commercial layer through rights, franchises, distribution and new formats built on the same sporting foundation.