Selection Sunday = Opportunities

Friends,

We’re sending a special Selection Sunday newsletter today, because the opportunities around March Madness are too great to pass up. Today we’ll highlight opportunities around March Madness, Wiiiild Facts and of course the biz around the sport. Let’s goooo!

Fun Facts:

1/ Bet On It:  45 million Americans will bet on March Madness, according to last year’s study by the American Gaming Association. They bet $3.1 billion on the tourney … WILD!

2 / The NCAA Tournament surpassed 10 billion impressions

3/ The term “March Madness” was first used in 1939 for an Illinois high school basketball tournament but it wasn’t associated with the college tourney until broadcaster Brent Musburger used it during his 1982 coverage.

4/ In 2022 the average viewership for games was over 10 million 

5/ The perfect bracket - Your odds of filling out a perfect bracket are not good. They are lower than your odds of winning the lottery or getting struck by lightening.

6/ Wallethub estimates hourly corporate losses of about $2B as a result of workers productivity being down due to March Madness

7/ Pizza orders increase nearly 20% during March Madness 

8/ Beer companies on average will produce 14 million barrels each month. However, during March Madness they produce nearly 18 million!

Opportunities

During the Selection Sunday show there will be millions of people watching. The opportunities start today and are endless from athletes, schools, creators, brands, etc.. Once today’s show is done teams will spend on travel, hotel, food, etc., but there are some massive opportunities with all of the eyeballs on the tourney.

1/ Check this thread for athlete opportunities:

2/ Travel - Local areas will be flooded with tourist for the games. Travel companies, airlines, Airbnb’s, etc..

3/ Gaming - $3.1B will be spent on the games. Existing gaming platforms will go crazy this month, but what other opportunities are out there around this? Providing data each round is a massive opportunity with an easier barrier of entry.

• Charge a nominal fee (say $100) to provide data for your members.

• Host daily interactive twitter spaces / zoom to go through data, answer questions, etc.

• $100 × 1,000 people = a quick $100k to launch a biz around March Madness. Remember there’s 45M people that are betting around March Madness…

The Biz Around The Tourney

As the annual March Madness basketball tournament approaches, it's worth taking a closer look at just how much money is involved in this massive event. From sponsorships to TV broadcasting deals and more, the NCAA and its member schools are set to rake in a staggering amount of money this year.

To begin with, it's important to note that the NCAA generates the vast majority of its revenue from the men's basketball tournament. In fact, the NCAA's March Madness TV contract with CBS and Turner Sports is worth a whopping $10.8 billion over 14 years, with the majority of that money going to the NCAA itself. That means the NCAA earns an average of $771 million each year just from TV broadcasting rights.

But it's not just the NCAA that profits from March Madness. Individual colleges and universities also stand to make a lot of money from the tournament. According to a report from Forbes, the 68 teams that make it into the tournament earn a share of a $220 million payout from the NCAA. That payout is distributed based on each team's performance in the tournament, with teams earning more money the further they advance.

On top of that, many schools also earn money from sponsorships and endorsements related to March Madness. For example, Coca-Cola is a major sponsor of the NCAA, and its logo will be prominently displayed throughout the tournament. Other companies that have paid to be official sponsors of the tournament include AT&T, Capital One, and Buffalo Wild Wings.

So how much money do individual schools actually make from March Madness? It can vary quite a bit depending on the school and how well its team performs. According to data from USA Today, in 2019, the top-earning school in the tournament was Duke, which brought in $34.7 million in revenue from basketball that year. That includes both revenue from the tournament itself (including the NCAA payout) as well as revenue from other basketball-related activities, such as ticket sales and merchandise.

Of course, it's worth noting that not all schools make a profit from their basketball programs. According to a report from USA Today, nearly two-thirds of NCAA Division I men's basketball programs lost money in 2019. For many schools, the cost of running a successful basketball program (including expenses such as coaching salaries, travel costs, and facilities) is simply too high to make a profit.

WBB

It's an important issue that has gained a lot of attention in recent years, and it's worth discussing in the context of the money generated by the tournament.

While the men's basketball tournament is by far the more high-profile and lucrative of the two, the women's tournament also generates significant revenue. However, there is a significant disparity between the amount of money the men's and women's tournaments generate.

For example, the NCAA's TV contract for the men's tournament is worth $771 million per year, while the contract for the women's tournament is worth only $35 million per year. That means that the NCAA generates more than 20 times as much revenue from the men's tournament as it does from the women's tournament.

This disparity is reflected in the payouts to individual schools as well. According to Forbes, the 68 teams that make it into the men's tournament earn a share of a $220 million payout from the NCAA, while the 64 teams that make it into the women's tournament earn a share of only $15 million.

It's worth noting that the NCAA has made some efforts to address this disparity in recent years. In 2021, for example, the organization announced that it would provide "gender-neutral" weight rooms for both tournaments, after images of the stark difference between the men's and women's weight rooms went viral. The NCAA also pledged to increase the amount of money it allocates to the women's tournament in the coming years, although the specifics of that increase have yet to be announced.

There’s no question Women’s basketball is on the rise, and fro a biz standpoint we’re excited to see the $$ keep flooding into the sport.

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