March Madness

The outsized audience for this week’s highly-watched women’s NCAA basketball match between Iowa and LSU may also have noticed that many of the commercials seen during the game belonged to AT&T, State Farm, Home Depot and Gatorade. There was good reason: Optimum Sports.

Women’s basketball is heating up on ESPN. The network just scored its most-watched NCAA Women’s Sweet 16 on record with 2.4 million viewers across all games. That’s up 96% year-over-year, per Nielsen. The Iowa Hawkeyes defeated the Colorado Buffaloes in the most-viewed Sweet 16 game, tallying a huge audience of 6.9 million, making it the best Sweet 16 audience ever recorded and the second most-watched women’s college basketball game since 1995.

Overall, the NCAA Tournament is averaging 9.4 million viewers on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV, a 4% increase over last year. Pictured: North Carolina State’s Michael O’Connell (12) reacts after a basket by DJ Burns Jr. (30) against Duke during the second half of an Elite Eight college basketball game in the NCAA Tournament in Dallas, Sunday, March 31. (Tony Gutierrez/AP)

Overall, the tournament is averaging 9.07 million viewers on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV. That is a slight increase over the 9.05 million average at this point last year. Pictured: Alabama forward Nick Pringle (23) celebrates with the mascot after Alabama beat Grand Canyon in a second-round college basketball game in the NCAA Tournament in Spokane, Wash., Sunday, March 24. (Ted S. Warren/AP)

Through the first five days of NCAA “March Madness” averaged 9.0 million Nielsen-measured across CBS, TBS, TNT, and TruTV, according to the NCAA — the best results ever for the tournament over that period.

The brackets for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament — aka “March Madness” — were revealed Sunday, bringing joy and tears in equal amounts to teams selected and shunned. The defending champions from 2023, the UConn Huskies, were announced as the No. 1 overall seed playing out of the East region.

NCAA’s “March Madness,” the three-week men’s college basketball tournament on CBS and Turner cable networks and platforms, has seen TV advertising price increases of mid- to high-single digit percentage gains with overall ad-revenue volume of similar percentage hikes.

The NCAA March Madness mens’ college basketball tournament has seen strong double-digit percentage national TV advertising gains, according to an estimate, as the initial five days of viewership maintain the levels of a year ago. Eight days of the tournament — through the Sweet Sixteen round (March 15-23) — has seen an estimated 22% increase in advertising revenues to $457.7 million in national TV advertising on four networks, according to iSpot.tv. The data includes national linear TV, national time-shifted, local, video-on-demand and OTT.

March Madness is expected to rake in more than $1 billion for TV partners CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery as it plays out from March 14 until the winning team is crowned on April 3. “March Madness gives advertisers audience levels they cannot find anywhere else,” says one buyer.

CBS Sports and Turner, which carry the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, said their commercial inventory is sold out on TV and on digital platforms, generating record revenue for the event.
Prices were up double digits, with 30-second spots on early games costing a couple of hundred thousand dollars and commercials in the final game going for more than $2 million. Two years ago, the tournament generated nearly $1 billion in ad revenue, according to Kantar.

The first five days of NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament — Thursday through Monday — witnessed viewership 18% lower to an average 2.5 million Nielsen-measured viewers. In 2019, an average 3.04 million viewers per game was registered through the second round. Last year’s NCAA March Madness event was canceled, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the 10th year that CBS and Turner have teamed up for March Madness. While the deal provides the NCAA with its largest source of revenue, it has also turned a profit for both networks as well as benefiting fans because all of the games are available nationally. The success of the partnership, which will last until at least 2032, has exceeded the expectations of CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus.

Advertising inventory in NCAA’s Men’s College Basketball Tournament — “March Madness” — is “virtually sold out,” says John Bogusz, EVP sports sales and marketing at CBS Television Network. “There were [price] increases in all rounds through the championship weekend,” he added, speaking on a call with reporters Wednesday. Bogusz did not provide details.

Ad sales have been “remarkably strong” following last year’s cancellation. Turner and CBS have now had an entire year to prepare for the return of March Madness, which is going to look a little different from 2019. All 67 games will be staged entirely in Indiana, and 10 production teams will work the event, up from the usual eight.

With the tournament about to begin, broadcasters, publishers and other businesses need to be wary about potential claims arising from their use of terms and logos associated with the tournament, including the well-known marks March Madness^®, The Big Dance^®, Final Four^®, Women’s Final Four^®, Elite Eight^® and The Road to the Final Four^® (with and without the word “The”), each of which is a federally registered trademark.

The cancellation of March Madness because of the coronavirus pandemic has dealt a costly blow to college sports programs, the National Collegiate Athletic Association indicated on Thursday. The NCAA said that financial distributions to Division I member institutions at the end of the 2019-20 academic year would be $225 million — just 37.5% of the expected $600 million amount.

The fallout from Thursday’s coronavirus-driven cancellation of the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Tournament will be over $1 billion in ad revenue for CBS and Turner Sports. “There’s no bad guy here,” said one expert, but remedies will almost certainly have to be created.

There will be no madness this March after the NCAA on Thursday said the college tournament was canceled amid the coronavirus outbreak. The news came shortly after the AAC, SEC and Big Ten, Big 12 and Pac-12 Tournaments were canceled.

The NCAA’s men’s basketball tournament, one of the nation’s most-watched TV sporting events, will be played this year in mostly empty arenas out of concerns for the widening coronavirus pandemic.

The top executives overseeing CBS Sports’ and Turner Sports’ annual telecast of the NCAA’s March Madness men’s basketball college championship said today that they were continuing to prepare for the event as if it would not be affected by the spread of coronavirus, though both were ready to shift plans if the NCAA decided doing so would be necessary, potentially resulting in games that are broadcast without audiences in attendance.

Nothing but net as advertisers snatch up the last of the tourney’s ad inventory a full month before tipoff.

March Madness continued to be a full-court moneymaker with CBS and Turner Sports generating $655.1 million in ad revenue during the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament, according to new data from Standard Media Index.

Among all sporting events, the March Madness NCAA basketball tournament may be the most tailor-made for streaming video. According to CBS and Turner Sports, which have TV rights to the games and operate the streaming offerings, March Madness Live is setting new records for streams and streaming hours so far, with both categories up by more than 25% compared to last year.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association is very serious about taking action against anyone who may try to trade off the goodwill in its March Madness marks — even if the NCAA’s actual marks are not used.