Wheat City wants Brier back in town for 2028

BRANDON — Seven years after hosting Canada’s top men’s curling tournament, the City of Brandon has made a bid to bring the Brier back in 2028. Curling Canada will announce [...]

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Curling Canada will announce the host for the tournament, which will be held from Feb. 25 to March 5, in the fall. “I like to think that we’ve put in the best bid we possibly can, and that we stand a very good chance,” said Jennifer Watson, executive director of Brandon First, a non-profit organization that promotes Brandon as a host city for events. Bidding for the popular 18-team event closed at the end of May, and the winning city is expected to be notified confidentially by Sept. 30.

A Curling Canada spokesperson said Thursday the bidding process is confidential and he can’t reveal which other cities placed bids. Brandon also hosted the event in 1963, 1982 and 2019. The 2019 Brier drew about 75,000 spectators who spent an estimated $2.8 million in the city during the week-and-a-half event.

“Brandon has a history of putting on incredible events, including the Brier in the curling world,” Watson said. “We knock it out of the park every time. Brandon puts on an exceptional event-hosting experience for all events when they come, but particularly those flagship events.

The Keystone Centre is second to none.” Curling Canada documents show the tournament comes with an $800,000 hosting fee and would have a $10- to $20-million economic impact. Brandon Mayor Jeff Fawcett said the hosting fee would be split 50-50 between the city and the province.

Brandon has also hosted several other major curling events, including the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in 1993 and 2002, the Women’s World Championships in 1995 and the Canadian Olympic Trials in 1997. Watson said she thinks the city stands a good chance at winning the bid for the 2028 Brier. The city also made an unsuccessful bid to host the 2025 Olympic Trials.

Watson said in that case, it just might not have been the right time for Brandon. Fawcett said Curling Canada called him after the trials were awarded to Halifax and said how much they like coming to the western Manitoba city. “Any time Brandon puts in a bid for a Curling Canada event, it will get considered,” Fawcett said Thursday.

“I’m always confident when we put one in.” He said curling “fits wonderfully” in the Keystone Centre, and that Manitoba is a great place for the sport, which helps Brandon’s chances. Economic spinoffs, promotion of the city, the atmosphere of the event and residents having a larger sense of civic pride are the main pluses if the city hosts the tournament, Fawcett said.

“All the national attention for one week in the sporting world comes onto the city, and there’s just a lot of activity that goes around that,” he said. It’s possible that Curling Canada could decide Brandon hosted the event too recently, he said, “but we know they like coming to Brandon because it’s easy to operate it out of here and our community gets behind it, and they really enjoy that, too.” Watson said that following the COVID-19 pandemic, this Brier proposal is “the first real chance we’ve had to put in a solid bid since the world sort of fell apart.”

She said the city has also submitted bids to host the 2027 Telus Cup, a national under-18 club hockey championship, and the 2027 Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association soccer championship. Results of those bids are expected by the end of fall. “We’re hoping to have some big announcements across the board, so we’ll see what happens.

The waiting part is the hardest.” — Brandon Sun