SPONSORSHIPS


A ram, a horse and beer: The evolution of a USA Curling sponsorship


By Rick Patzke, USA Curling CEO


identified himself as Jeff, who wanted to ask me a few questions about USA Curling. As Jeff began talking, it seemed he also wanted to make a con- fession of sorts, although that came a few weeks later. In our phone conversation, Jeff explained that


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he was with a company named Te RAM Restau- rant & Brewery; that he and several others with RAM had a somewhat otherworldly experience involving curling a month or so back, and that maybe his company would be interested in spon- soring USA Curling in some way, if we were in- terested. Tat out-of-the-blue call set up our first in-per-


son meeting at Te RAM headquarters in Lake- wood, Wash., later that spring and resulted in the start of a multi-year partnership that continues today. Sponsorships – or as I prefer to call them, partnerships – are difficult to come by, especially for sports or programs and properties that are less than mainstream and don’t come with a da- tabase of hundreds of thousands of members. Of- ten they are the result of a strong relationship, or they come about by a chance meeting or unique occurrence. Te RAM story is a great example of a little bit of all three of these elements. In the winter of 2009-10, Jeff Iverson Jr., his


brother, Dave, and several of the RAM company officers were gearing up for their annual team leadership gathering, this one bound for New Orleans in early February. In keeping with com- pany tradition, they had created a theme for the conference, which was bringing together about 40 store leaders from RAM properties around the country. With lots of media attention and hype about


the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games coming up in 2010, the creative RAM organizers decided that their conference theme that year would re- volve around having all of the attendees descend upon New Orleans as the 1976 U.S. Olympic Curling Team. Never mind that curling wasn’t in the Olympics in 1976; nor that 40 was 10 times the number of curlers on a team, nor that the most anyone in the organizing group knew about curling was how to spell it. Sometimes the best


ot long aſter the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver in 2010, I re- ceived a call from a man who simply


them the Iverson brothers. “We were like, ‘What just happened?’” Jeff


outcomes result from happenstance, or maybe cosmic alignment. In the 1976 U.S. Olympic Curling Team’s favor,


New Orleans was not exactly a hotbed of curling, and for that matter, most of the USA didn’t know a whole lot about the sport yet either. It didn’t take long for the RAM team to find out that they had stumbled onto something, however. “From the moment we got on the plane, in our


matching red track suits with 1976 U.S. Olym- pic Curling Team across the front, there were people cheering, clapping us on the back, buying us drinks,” said Jeff, whose parents founded the company as a “Deluxe Tavern” in Lakewood in 1971. “In New Orleans, everywhere we went, it was


the same thing,” Jeff went on. “A group of us would walk into a bar, and all of a sudden the music would stop, a guy would get on a micro- phone and yell out, ‘Te U.S. Curling Team is in the house!’ and the place would go wild. It was just unbelievable.” Sitting there in Jeff’s office in Lakewood, for-


mer USCA Director James Pleasants and I were alternately laughing, shaking our heads, and sometimes damn near crying as the whole story unfolded. A couple of the more enterprising RAM team


members went out and bought some Swiffer sweepers and were soon teaching people how to curl in the middle of Bourbon Street. “Tom (an Illinois store leader), who had no


idea what curling was before this, was teaching someone to sweep on the street, and a cop on horseback called him over,” Jeff recalled. “We fig- ured we had finally pushed the limits, and Tom was getting a ticket for something. Actually, the cop wanted a picture of the curling team with his horse!” When the RAM team/1976 U.S. Olympic


Curling Team leſt New Orleans aſter the three- day conference, many of them were still shaking their heads about what had transpired, among


said. Tey continued to talk about it once back in Lakewood, and started to do a little more research into curling, particularly USA Curl- ing. “We felt a little guilty,” Jeff admitted, “and thought that maybe we ought to do something to try to help support curling.” By the time we finished the meeting, and


a great lunch at the Lakewood RAM, we had the concept of a partnership mapped out, built around the RAM Taster Curl, a beer-sampling tray in the shape of a ram’s horn. Going on seven years now, RAM makes a donation to USA Curl- ing for every Taster Curl sold as part of its “Curls for Curling” campaign. One of the ancillary benefits of this partner-


ship has been the blossoming of local partner- ships between curling clubs and Te RAM in cities like Boise, Idaho; Fishers, Ind.; Highlands Ranch, Colo., and Seattle. Tis is a bonus above and beyond the national relationship we enjoy, and certainly adds value for all involved. Te RAM (www.theram.com), which recently


became employee-owned, now has more than 30 locations in six states – Washington, Oregon, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Colorado – and this includes properties under the names of C.B. & Potts in Colorado and Shenanigans in Tacoma, Wash. Te company opened its newest location in Columbus, Ohio, on Oct. 31, and I recently in- troduced the new store manager there with Co- lumbus Curling Club leaders to explore potential local partnership opportunities. Te next time you are in the neighborhood of


a RAM property, please pay a visit, make known your curling affiliation, and thank them for their support. If you have a club in the area of a RAM property and have not yet tried to establish a lo- cal relationship, send me a note and I’ll be happy to make an introduction for you. With their fun food, friendly atmosphere and TVs everywhere, Te RAM restaurants make great locations for curling viewership parties, by the way, so with the next Curling Night in America series coming up on NBC Sports Network in January, now is the time to start these relationships. And the next time you’re on Bourbon Street,


wear your curling gear, and maybe you, too, will get a chance to pose with a policeman’s horse! Q


USA Curling (( 9


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