March Madness
Millions of die-hard NCAA basketball fans were glued to their televisions yesterday to see how each game played out. Millions more were at work watching the games from their desk computer. The NCAA Men’s Tournament is only being broadcast on CBS at various times throughout the day. This year, for the first time, at CBSSportsline.com you can watch the games live and free of charge.
Some companies are not allowing their employees to access any of the NCAA Tournament coverage or scores. According to MSNBC, Omni-Duct Systems in Anaheim, Calif., information technology manager Mike Delawder has blocked access to the games and all sports Web sites related to the tournament. CBSSportsline.com does have a feature on the games called “boss button” for when your boss approaches, it turns the game off and a spread sheet is displayed. Pretty cool, right?
From a marketing standpoint, The NCAA Men’s Tournament is a huge playing field. There are many opportunities to get publicity for your company. Everywhere you look, you see advertisements. On ESPN.com the tournament, in association with MTVu, features different advertisements for Men’s Old Spice, the new AT&T, Gatorade and Orbitz.com.
During the actual basketball games is primetime for advertising. The Sports Talk on CBS is powered by Pontiac and the tournament is sponsored by Nieva, Cingular, Lexus and Hartford Mutual Funds. Several different commercials are aired in between timeouts and breaks in the games including Applebee’s, Mazda and Coca-Cola.
The championship game, on April 3, has a $1 million price tag for an ad that will run during the game. The NCAA Tournament has the single largest out-of-home viewing because of the various ways that are available to watch the game. Cingular Wireless is giving its customers wireless updates as well as video highlights. Coca-Cola is also capitalizing on this online medium as a source to reach their target audience. They are featuring an online, two-on-two game, which can be viewed and played at NCAAChampRun.com.
Another huge part of the NCAA Men’s Tournament are the brackets. Everywhere you look there is a different pool where you can enter your own bracket. A lot of people watch the tournament because they want to see how their brackets end up and if they picked the right teams to win. The term, bracketology, has been coined for how people assemble their brackets and how the tournament is analyzed. Marketing and advertisements are used in brackets for various pools and companies that supply brackets.