Men’s Big 5 Classic to return to Wells Fargo Center for the next three seasons

The men’s Big 5 Classic, the six-team, two-pod, round robin-style tournament culminating with a triple-header at the Wells Fargo Center, is here to stay.

The Big 5 announced Thursday morning that the triple-header finale will return to the Wells Fargo Center for the next three seasons.

Last year’s event, which officially welcomed Drexel into the club, was a one-year deal. Stakeholders obviously came away satisfied, and so the show will go on. St. Joseph’s swept its competition, including a championship game victory over Temple, to take the inaugural title.

The 2024-25 triple-header will take place on Dec. 7. The pods — Penn, St. Joe’s, and Villanova in one; Drexel, La Salle, and Temple in the other — will remain the same.

The announcement Thursday was at Villanova’s Finneran Pavilion, where the Big 5 also announced the official launch of the women’s version of the new Big 5 format, which now includes Drexel. The women’s teams will play in the same three-school pods as the men, and the women’s round-robin will finish with a triple-header on Dec. 6 at the Finneran Pavilion.

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St. Joe’s also won the women’s Big 5 last season in the old format, in which the five teams played the other four and the team with the best record was crowned as city champion.

Following the 2024 Big 5 Classic, the pods for the men and women will remain synchronized and rotate every two years. The site of the women’s finale also will rotate on a yearly basis to other sites that will be determined at a later date, the Big 5 said in a press release.

Tickets for the women’s event at Villanova go on sale June 17, although deposits are being accepted at https://villanova.evenue.net/events/WB5. Group sales for the men’s event are available now by calling 215-389-9543 or emailing wfc-groupevents@comcastspectacor.com. Luxury suites can be booked online at wellsfargocentersuites.com. General tickets are scheduled to go on sale in September at Big5Classic.com.

The Big 5 on Thursday also named St. Joe’s grad Dan Hilferty, the chairman and chief executive officer of Comcast Spectacor and governor of the Flyers, as the ambassador of the Big 5.

“After a great response from the inaugural year of the new men’s format, I am thrilled to see that the success of the reinvigorated Big 5 is extending to women’s basketball,” Hilferty said in a release. “As a lifelong basketball fan and Big 5 alumnus, I am really excited to be working with the six universities to keep traditions alive and champion the future of the Big 5.”