Curling Canada announces new March Madness-style event for September

Curling Canada announced a new event for the 2022-23 season on Monday that will feature the best teams in the country competing in a single-knockout bracket tournament.

The inaugural PointsBet Invitational will take place Sept. 21-25 at Willie O’Ree Place in Fredericton, N.B.

BREAKING NEWS: We are thrilled to announce Curling Canada’s newest championship, the PointsBet Invitational, played Sept. 21-25 at Willie O’Ree Place in Fredericton, N.B. Details in our story ➡️ https://t.co/mr2YlCiF3q@PointsBetCanada pic.twitter.com/0c3Ttq6e5V

The event will have 16 men's and 16 women's teams battling it out over four days in a March Madness-style tournament in pursuit of a $350,000 purse.

“The drama and emotion of a single-knockout bracket tournament is well-chronicled in sports such as tennis and the NCAA basketball championships, and we expect our new event to bring that kind of passion and excitement to curling,” said Curling Canada CEO Katherine Henderson. 

The new format will give curling fans a chance to see many of the new lineups that were created this off-season at the conclusion of another four-year quadrennial. 

The full men's and women's fields will be announced at a later date, but Curling Canada says the top 12 ranked teams for each gender on the World Curling Ranking System will be invited as well as Nova Scotia’s Team Emily Deschenes and Ontario’s Team Landan Rooney, the reigning women's and men's Canadian Junior champions, and Northern Ontario's Team Tracy Larocque and Nova Scotia’s Team Nick Deagle, the most recent winners of the women's and men's Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships. Additionally, the host committee has selected Team Jack Smeltzer and Team Andrea Kelly, both from Fredericton, to compete.