Snake Eyes: PointsBet Invitational quietly dropped from curling calendar this season

Tucked in at the bottom of a midsummer Curling Canada news release was a single paragraph that confirmed the PointsBet Invitational was no longer on the organization’s annual schedule.

It was a quiet goodbye for a competition that failed to gain traction after debuting in 2022. 

The event was originally trumpeted by the national federation as the first major championship of the quadrennial, featuring new teams, a new format and “new ways to be entertained.”

Legalized sports betting was in its infancy in Canada at the time. Comparisons to the March Madness American men’s college basketball tournament were made.

But the PointsBet Invitational fell flat in Year 1 and never found its footing.

“It was a good idea. It really was,” said longtime TSN curling broadcaster Russ Howard. “But the format, in my humble opinion, was part of the problem.”

The September 2022 debut — dubbed “Fall Madness” — was held in Fredericton. The top 12 Canadian teams in each gender were joined by national junior champions, club champions, host committee-selected teams and sponsor’s exemptions.

The competition later moved to Oakville, Ont., and eventually to Calgary, but crowds were sparse. 

Curling Canada high-performance executive director David Murdoch said sponsorship and the compact calendar were two key components of the decision to remove the PointsBet Invitational this season. 

“We were like, ‘Well, is it a necessity for us?,'” he said. “Maybe it isn’t. Should we take a year off and just see where this year goes? Because it is (a) busy (time) for our athletes. And is it really necessary?”

There was no event replacement in a packed 2026-27 campaign, which includes five Grand Slam of Curling events before Christmas and three Rock League stops through early February.

Starting next year, the Canadian mixed doubles championship will move into the vacant spot on the calendar as a major fall event, Curling Canada said in its release announcing the pre-qualified teams for the national playdowns.

The PointsBet Invitational’s debut included 16 men’s and 16 women’s teams competing for a purse of over $350,000.

“I think we can just see how this first year goes and if it’s something that we really want to see for the high-performance program,” Murdoch said in a recent interview. “And for Curling Canada in terms of promotion, where it’s just the Canadian athletes, then maybe that’s something that we can build out as the quad goes.

“There’s certainly some benefits that we enjoyed from just having the Canadian teams all together under one roof.”

PointsBet launched a Sweep 16 Bracket Challenge in 2022 with a $1-million prize if a fan predicted a perfect men’s and women’s bracket. A celebrity invitational that included legendary sprinter Donovan Bailey, former NHLer Shayne Corson and TV’s “Trailer Park Boys” also generated some buzz.

However, early rounds featured some lopsided results with inexperienced curling teams meeting top-ranked rinks. At times, it put the television rights-holder in an unusual spot for picking feature matchups to broadcast.

“We had to say, ‘OK well there’s four games out there, what’s our best game?'” Howard said. “So you don’t cover Rachel Homan. But people tune in to see Rachel Homan.

“So we’d end up with Team 8 against Team 9 and it’s not great TV. I think that was part of the problem.”

The Sweep 16 challenge was dropped in 2024 and the event format was significantly tweaked last year to mimic the environment at the Pre-Trials and Olympic Trials. The single-knockout setup was dropped, teams were cut to 20 from 32, and each rink was guaranteed four round-robin games.

The PointsBet Invitational also generated a fraction of the revenue that other Season of Champions events like national and world championships brought in.

The 2022 event operating loss before distributions to the host committee and member associations was $654,623, per financial figures posted on Curling Canada’s website.

Numbers were similar for 2023 ($643,833 loss) and 2024 ($671,377 loss). Information from the 2025 competition, which would be included in the 2025-26 year-end financial statement, has yet to be released.

The Canadian mixed doubles championship will be held Oct. 25-31, 2027, in Liverpool, N.S. Reigning champions Serena Gray-Withers and Victor Pietrangelo will represent Canada at the Jan. 4-10 world playdowns in Lohja, Finland.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 5, 2026.