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Final Four is tonight, which means
more money to win |
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From marchmadman Updated 04/06/24, 12:30pm |
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March
Madness can be a money-making business. While the
Super Bowl is the most wagered-on sporting event ($16 billion), the NCAA
Tournament is a close second. The first
March Madness brackets were filled out in 1977 where 88 people completed
brackets at Jody s Club Forest bar in Long Island, NY. The winner won $880 in what many believe
was the first March Madness bracket pool. Now, according
to the American Gaming Association, a record 68 million Americans wagered
$15.5 billion on March Madness in 2023. 31 million
bettors placed traditional bets online, at a sportsbook, or with a bookie (in
Frackville and Hazleton) 21.5 million
bet casually with friends 56.3 million
participated in a bracket contest 25% of
American adults bet on the NCAA Tournament An estimated
56.3 million Americans filled out brackets last year, with the average
bracket entry fee being $29 and most participants submitted two. We are a
bargain. There are no excuses to have
not paid your entry fees by now. PAY
UP! The NCAA
earned $873 million in broadcasting and licensing in 2023. In 2010, the NCAA signed a 14-year, $10.8
Billion deal with CBS Sports and Turner Broadcasting to have the tournament
broadcasting rights. In 2016, they
agreed to an eight-year extension worth $8.8 Billion. The NCAA
distributes some of this money to the conferences of the teams participating
in the Tournament through their "unit" system. The NCAA pays out 132 units per men s
tournament, one for every game played by a team. That
means every team that makes the tournament earns a unit for its conference. Each unit for the current men's tournament is expected
to be worth a bit under $2 million. So far, the
teams in this year's Final Four - UConn, Purdue, Alabama, and NC State - have
earned 5 units for their conferences by making the Round of 64, Round of 32,
Sweet 16, Elite Eight, and Final Four that's approximately $10 million for
each of their conferences. The units
are then paid out over the following six years, meaning this year conferences
are earning on units from 2018 to 2023 (excluding 2020 because the tournament
was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic). Most
conferences distribute the money evenly across all teams. But
there are exceptions. Gonzaga, for
example, earns more money per unit than other schools in the West Coast
Conference. That was negotiated when Gonzaga
threatened to leave for the Mountain West in 2018. For how
popular the women's game has become, especially over the last two seasons,
you'd be surprised by how much the women's teams get paid. They
don't. They get nothing. You probably
were not surprised. But with the
NCAA s new television deal with ESPN, units should come to women s basketball
in the near future. The media contract, signed in
early January, is for eight years and $920 million, including women s
basketball and a list of nonrevenue sports. Women s
basketball is valued at $65 million per tournament, roughly 10 times more
than in the contract that ends this year. The takeaway
is that schools have a clear financial incentive for their teams to excel in
the men s tournament. Adding that to the women s
side should lead to even more investment in a women's basketball sport. But if
schools continue to direct money to the money-generating programs of football
and men's basketball and now women's basketball in order to
pay those coaches handsomely and now the players too, other sports could
suffer. Sayonara
fencing.
Hopefully you
are one of the few who get to say sayonara to the other losers in the Madness
of March and take home that payday. It's in the way that you
use it |
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Contact Us Mailing Address: Brian Baldwin | 200 S
Liberty St | Orwigsburg, PA 17961 C 570-294-3889 | MarchMadMan@outlook.com
| http://marchmadman.com PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/brianbaldwin Venmo: https://venmo.com/BrianBaldwin570 Any and all rules for any Madness of March pool may
change at any time up to the tip-off of the first game of that pool. Any changes will be posted on this and/or its respective website. #GoTerps #UNCW #WeAre |
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