The 2023 CEBL season was the fifth season of the Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL). It began on May 24, 2023, and the regular season ended on July 30, 2023. It was the inaugural season for the Calgary Surge and the Winnipeg Sea Bears. The Calgary Surge relocated from Guelph while Winnipeg was added as an expansion franchise.
This year was the first season where the league was divided in two conferences. The top four teams in each conference qualified for the playoffs; had the Vancouver Bandits finished in fifth place in the Western Conference, the fourth-place team would have been eliminated instead; as hosts, the Bandits automatically qualify for the semi-finals as a de facto first-place team, along with the first-place team from the Eastern Conference. The playoffs commence with the third- and fourth-placed teams in play-in matches, with the winners facing their own conference's second-place teams in the quarterfinals. The quarterfinal winners will then face their respective division semi-final opponent.[1]
On March 16, 2023, CEBL announced a television deal with TSN: TSN will televise weekly games and broadcast the rest of the games online, and they will also televise the championship weekend.[2]
The first CEBL Clash is a "showcase game featuring 20 players from around the league",[4] scheduled to be played on August 26, 2023 at Videotron Centre in Quebec City, Quebec. Head coaches were announced on August 15,[4] followed by rosters on August 18.[5] Each team is represented by at least one player, with the nearby Montreal Alliance having a Clash-leading four players on Team East. Team West ended winning the Clash 107-102.