The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is a long haul as it is, but subjecting fans to the same series of commercials every weekend for roughly a month can make the road from the First Four to the Final Four seem interminable for the event’s captive audience. For sponsors and networks, however, that road is paved by millions of viewers, laid with of billions of dollars in cash stretching into a monthlong steam of revenue well worth the toll.
March Madness generated $4.8 billion in ad revenue within the past decade, according to Kantar Media. Tournament ads brought in more than $643 million from 102 advertisers in 2008 and drew drew $613 million from only 82 companies last year.
Hundreds of companies lineup to sponsor the event and have their ads played over and over and over again on CBS. However, some companies don’t even sponsor the event and never play a single commercial throughout the entire month and still gain publicity. Just take a look at the courts that the games are played on. Then take a look at the jerseys of most of the teams playing in the tournament. If you think that March Madness is a giant Nike commercial, you’re not seeing things.
Because of a rule change during the offseason requiring NCAA approval of all basketball uniforms, jerseys can now sport the manufacturer’s logo. While not affecting much of anything within the game itself, the change did Nike a big favor heading into March Madness, where 51 of the 68 schools in the tournament field wear Nike or its subsidiary Jordan brand. For a bit of perspective on how big this is for the folks in Oregon consider that Adidas is the next biggest apparel supplier in the field and has only 10 teams’ jerseys as display space.
It’s even more of a Nikefest now that 14 of the teams in the tournament’s Sweet 16 are wearing the swoosh on their shirts. Fans and NCAA sponsors could get all lathered up about what seems like millions of dollars in free publicity for a company that isn’t even one of the event’s big donors, but ethics issues aside it’s hard to get mad at Nike for pumping their product without pausing the action.