1999 Brier
SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Curling
1999 BRIER
ON THE ROCKS
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Brew crew sucking up record suds
... and other mind-numbing numbers
Brier fans have not only soaked up a lot of curling so far, they've soaked up a lot of beer.
At 4 p.m., when 500 Saskatchewan fans showed up at the Brier Patch, they pushed the Hec Gervais drink token sales over the 100,000 mark.
The numbers continue to be a storyline of their own at the 70th Brier.
At the end of the 17 draws of regular round play, the running attendance total - highlighted by the two top crowds of the event so far (12,175 for Draw 16 yesterday and 13,450 for Draw 17) - is 179,405.
Add in pre-sales for the four games of the Page playoff system and that's a tickets sold total of 229,600 - more than 6,000 above the Calgary record of 223,322 at the 1997 Brier.
Add another 11,500 for the tiebreaker and you have 241,100.
With strong walk-up crowds this weekend Edmonton could still push attendance over the 250,000 mark.
A total of 11,700 and 12,200 tickets have been pre-sold for the two playoff games today.
The semifinal pre-sale is 12,600 and a total of 13,100 tickets have been sold for the final.
"Basically, we have about 3,800 tickets left for the semi and 3,300 for the final,'' said Chris Zukowski of Skyreach Centre's capacity for curling.
Meanwhile many more beers are going to be consumed between now and the end of this Brier.
"We hit the $350,000 mark in sales - or the 100,000 drink total,'' said Brier Patch boss Ken McRae.
"When those Saskatchewan people all showed up today, they bought a slew of tokens.
"We expected to be at the $400,000 mark by the end of the night and probably be at $600,000 when we're done. When it started, I was thinking about $530,000.
"We've been running about three-to-two against Winnipeg's numbers from last year. And I think we'll be about $50,000 over what Calgary sold."