Winnipeg Sea Bears will host 2025 CEBL championship weekend

Winnipeg has won its bid to host the 2025 Canadian Elite Basketball League championship weekend, beating out three other cities for the honour.

The proposal "blew away everyone else," said CEBL co-founder Mike Morreale., adding Winnipeg was picked in a unanimous decision and was the right place for the August championship.

"Quite quickly, it caught on," Morreale said. "Then quite quickly others that had put bids in almost took a step back because they looked at it and said, 'You know what? I think this is right.'"

The league is trying to get more people across all ages in the game, Morreale said.

Basketball is a more accessible sport compared with hockey and football, Premier Wab Kinew said during a Tuesday news conference. 

"Basketball, while already being super popular, is even reaching another level," Kinew said. "The fact that we're giving young Manitobans for whom basketball is life, we're giving them that goal to aim for, to me it's just a super important contribution."

The current NDP government has committed to spend $450,000 to support the team's operation in the next three years, on top of $1 million the previous Progressive Conservative government put toward the initial bid.

The contribution from the previous government will go toward legacy programs involving the Sea Bears, including the renewal in the Buckets and Borders program — a non-profit program that works to improve communities through supporting basketball.

Last year, the program helped refurbish an outdoor basketball court in St. John's Park in Winnipeg's North End.

With the program's continuation, the team hopes to take on at least one project each summer over the next two years, said Sea Bears president Jason Smith.

'We're such a young franchise'

Smith says partnerships such as Buckets and Borders and support from the province, along with excitement from fans, helped make the winning bid.

"I think it's special first and foremost because we're such a young franchise," Smith said. "I really think that is a testament to Manitoba and Winnipeg and the community here."

The Sea Bears joined the league last season, and drew record-breaking numbers of fans for individual games. The team also set a league full-season attendance record of 65,609.

Hosting the championship weekend is another step in building the Sea Bears from the ground up, owner and chairman David Asper said in a Tuesday news release.

The championship is also expected to add a $5 million boost to the city's economy, according to a report from Tourism Winnipeg.

Mayor Scott Gillingham said he looks forward to seeing the positive effects on downtown business and building on the Sea Bears' success from their inaugural season last year.

"We want to win it as the local team," Sea Bears player Chad Posthumus said. "If we could make that happen, that would be great."

'Tsunami' of excitement, says local coach

Posthumus, who grew up in Winnipeg, has taken part in three championship weekends so far, including the first one hosted in Saskatoon.

He expects the championship to have a lot of "pizazz" and to be able to win the tournament in his hometown.

A local coach, Chad Celaire, is thrilled to hear that Winnipeg will host the championship.

He's seen a "tsunami" of excitement about basketball overcome the city, said the owner of Little Ballers, an early childhood basketball program.

Celaire is happy to see the Sea Bears in Winnipeg and their efforts to raise awareness of the sport in the province. Shawn Maranan, one of the team's members, works at Little Ballers.

"They're doing a lot of great things to try and get their team involved in community," Celaire said. "When those kind of things start happening at a real grassroots level, you start to see the impact of that as kids develop because they have people that are personally engaged in them and then they go and they get to see those guys play."

Celaire said it gives kids something big to shoot for in their future.

Event details coming

More details about the championship will be released throughout the summer and into the fall.

Past championship weekends have featured the league's annual awards, minor basketball events and music performances to go along with the premier showcase — the CEBL's top four teams competing for the right to hoist the league's trophy.

However, there's no guarantee that's how the 2025 format will look, CEBL officials said. It's still a young league, which tipped off in 2019, and changes could be made before Winnipeg hosts the event. 

Past host cities include Saskatoon, Edmonton, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Langley, B.C. 

Montreal is set to host the event this August.