This week marks the onset of curling season (and winter), with the second annual 2023 PointsBet Invitational, this time held in Oakville, Ontario. The event runs Sept. 27 through Oct. 1.
The curling tournament features a field of Canada’s best teams, as well as some of the most promising university/college, U-25, U-21, and grassroots competitors. The total purse is $350,000 in a single-elimination tournament.
Earlier this summer, when she was still CEO of Curling Canada (she has since moved over to Hockey Canada), Katherine Henderson talked about the lack of sportsbooks beyond PointsBet Canada engaging the betting population with markets during events like the Tim Hortons Brier men’s national championship and the Scotties Tournament of Hearts women’s national championship. Still, Henderson admitted that the marriage between curling and sports betting is still in its infancy.
“I don’t know enough about what’s going on yet,” she said at the time. “This is all still very new to all of us. It’s hard to read at this point.”
However, she did add there’s the potential for growth in sports betting, because curling is so conducive to betting live. And indirectly, she said Curling Canada’s research was showing them that sports betting will bring in new fans to the sport.
“Curling is a complicated game,” she said. “The beauty is the nuance, the strategies. We find that when people are betting responsibly on it, they follow the game more closely, they learn about it, and they tend to fall in love with it. What the skip of a team decides to do next can change the trajectory of the game, so the strategy changes after every shot. That unpredictability makes it right for micro betting.”
PointsBet Canada’s Chief Commercial Officer Nic Sulsky says he sees it in the betting numbers at the sportsbook, the official sports betting partner of Curling Canada. Last year’s inaugural PointsBet Invitational was held in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
“This is a single-elimination curling tournament, just like March Madness,” he says. “There’s lots of excitement. We’re trying to bring some rock ‘n’ roll to the world of curling.
“Last year was really our first year fully involved with the regulated market in Ontario. And what we saw were increases for every curling event throughout the season. It started with the Invitational. Then we had Scotties and then the Brier. The volume on our book increased more and more and that speaks a little bit to what we were talking about around education.
“Curling isn’t necessarily the most natural or historically popular betting sport, but that’s where education really comes into play. So each event, the numbers have grown and grown. We’re offering more markets at each event. This season is going to be even bigger, I think, than it was last year.”
PointsBet Canada also introduced the return of their free-to-play Sweep 16 Bracket Challenge, where people get the opportunity to win $1 million if they predict the perfect men’s and women’s brackets for the event, the first major championship of the 2023-24 curling season.
This year’s PointsBet Invitational will be held at Sixteen Mile Sports Complex.
