Jump around, all you college basketball fans in Charlotte: A glamorous new event is headed your way in 2022.
The Jumpman Invitational will be a regular-season holiday basketball game series in Charlotte that will feature the first four colleges that signed partnership deals with Jordan Brand in both basketball and football: UNC, Florida, Michigan and Oklahoma.
The showcase will include both the men’s and women’s basketball teams for each school, with each playing a single game each year during a two-night span. All four schools are committed to the Jumpman Invitational for 2022-24, with the potential of other colleges associated with the Jordan Brand name being added in the future as well.
The men’s and women’s games will all be played in the Spectrum Center, the home of the NBA’s Charlotte Hornets — who, not coincidentally, are owned by Michael Jordan.
The first Jumpman Invitational will be held Dec. 20-21, 2022, according to the Charlotte Sports Foundation. The CSF announced the event Thursday.
All four basketball games in 2022 — two women’s, two men’s — will be televised by ESPN’s family of networks. The matchups for the games have yet to be determined, and tickets won’t go on sale until early next year.
“The stars have aligned and we were able to get this done,” Danny Morrison, the executive director of the Charlotte Sports Foundation, said in an interview. “This is going to be a very special event for Charlotte, and we hope it is an annual event for many years to come past 2024, too.”
Morrison said the original idea for the Jumpman Invitational actually came from Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione.
“Joe was the catalyst,” said Morrison, who also previously served as the president of the Carolina Panthers during Jerry Richardson’s ownership of the team. “Joe and I have been friends for a long time. In a conversation from over two years ago, he said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could get the first four (football and basketball) Jordan Brand schools together for a doubleheader basketball event?’ We started getting more serious about it in the summer of 2019. Everyone embraced the concept, we found a lot of great partners and here we are.”
Morrison said the matchups for 2022 haven’t been set, but that the idea was for each of the original four teams to play the others one time over a three-year period from 2022-24.
Said Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles in a statement: “Charlotte has a rich history of hosting high-profile basketball events, including the NBA All-Star Game, NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games, the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament, the CIAA Men’s and Women’s Basketball Tournaments and this year’s Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Shootout (a quadruple-header which includes Charlotte, Wake Forest, N.C. State and East Carolina and will be played Dec. 17, 2021). We look forward to welcoming basketball fans from across the country to enjoy our hospitality and culture, and we’re grateful to the Charlotte Sports Foundation and Jordan Brand for organizing this event that will bring so much recognition and positive economic impact to our city.”
The Charlotte Sports Foundation organizes a number of high-profile sports events in the Queen City, including the annual ACC football championship each December in Bank of America Stadium. The city is under contract to host that title game through 2030.
This September 2021, the CSF will also host two massive college football games at Bank of America Stadium in a three-day period, with Appalachian State playing East Carolina on Sept. 2 and Clemson facing Georgia on Sept. 4. (The Carolina Panthers don’t open their regular season until the following weekend).
The Clemson-Georgia game, featuring two national title contenders with enormous fan bases, is already one of the most anticipated college football games ever to be played in Charlotte and should be a sellout. It’s difficult to get tickets on the secondary ticket market for under $350, even in the far reaches of the upper deck.
