Tag / TBS

by Hoosier Econ

NCAA & TV Ad Revenue from March Madness

march madness

The NCAA Basketball Tournament kicks off in a few days. As America tunes in to watch the games the NCAA will watch their bank coffers fill up. How much does the NCAA make each year during tournament time. According to Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, hundreds of millions:

    “The institution itself that’s based in Indianapolis, makes money primarily through television rights to the March Madness basketball tournament. They get somewhere in the neighborhood of $770 million dollars a year. That constitutes around 90% of all of the revenue that goes to the NCAA,”


Television stations are more then willing to pay that type of money to the NCAA for rights to air the games. Here is their ad revenue from 2013:

    Over the past decade (2004-2013), the NCAA men’s basketball tournament has triggered more than $6.88 billion of national TV ad spending from 269 different marketers. Ad revenue in 2013 was $1.15 billion, up 3.8 percent from the prior year.

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