Do You Have The Madness?
Mar 24th, 2011 by evany
If you all don’t realize yet it’s March. March only means one thing and one thing only MARCH MADNESS!
To all of you who are not sports fans, March Madness is the NCAA’s Men’s Basketball team and is probably the largest non-professional sporting event (next to the the Olympics, but I classify most of those athletes as professionals).
I’ve been an avid fan of Basketball and I’m always intent to keep up daily with score, but when March comes around a whole new level arises. But enough about my bias love of the whole shindig and on to a Marketer’s perspective. As we all know distribution is key to getting a product to the end consumer. The NCAA and its many partnerships is a great example of getting the service (basketball games) to the end consumers at the right time.
Originally, CBS was the one of the only companies to televise the event for the NCAA. Now the NCAA has CBS, TNT, TBS and TRU all broadcast games and they even have come out with a online streaming of all the games through a system called March Madness on Demand (video below).
Even an expansion into the iPhone App occurred with a similar product as the online version. Overall, the NCAA has used what its marquee part of the year and distributed it in multiple channels in hopes to bring in lifelong fans even if it is only for a simple one month period.