Happy Bracket Season
Happy Bracket season to all who celebrate. While you’re switching between tabs to catch as much of the nearly 3,000 minutes of basketball over the next three weeks, let’s keep in mind the numbers that drive this iconic time of year.
Overall, our data would say the NCAA and basketball brands in general should focus on North Carolina as a target market. There are major basketball programs already there, a professional team that has a growing fanbase, and it is one of the leading markets for recent graduates to move to start their professional lives.
Market Of Focus: North Carolina
We define basketball fans in our data as those that purchase tickets to NBA & WNBA games, streaming services, team merchandise, NCAA basketball (both men’s and women’s) as well as basketball video games.
Between 2022 and 2023, North Carolina and Colorado experienced the highest growth in basketball fans, increasing their fans per capita by 70% and 68%, respectively. Overall growth appears to concentrate in the eastern part of southern and midwest states. The spike in Colorado can likely be attributed to the Denver Nuggets winning the NBA Finals last year.
North Carolina is interesting, as it is more of a hot spot for college basketball than professional. Blue Blood programs, such as Duke University and the University of North Carolina, command national attention every March, regardless of their seasons’ successes. However, our data suggests the growth is heavily driven by the professional team in the market, the Charlotte Hornets.
NCAA Areas Of Focus
Looking at the college landscape, the NCAA men's & women’s basketball tournaments help drive the bulk of the NCAA’s annual revenue. Per Investopedia, the NCAA makes about $1 billion in revenue from these tournaments. This is bucketed into different categories; media, merchandise, tickets, and sponsorships. From a sponsorship perspective, there is a duty to appeal to current students, alumni, and local fanbases. This can pose a challenge for partners, as these are very different types of campaigns.
The top sponsors of this year’s tournaments are among the largest companies in the world, including Capital One, Coca Cola, AT&T, Intuit Turbotax, Buffalo Wild Wings, and more. While the portfolio mix is across categories like CPG, casual dining, and financial services, we see an overall profile among basketball and college sports fans. The idea behind this strategy is to appeal to at least one aspect of each fan. For example, AT&T may be leveraging their college sports sponsorship as a national campaign, but the nature of college is regional, giving them an edge on how to directly market at scale. Intuit Turbotax takes advantage of the time of year with tax season. Buffalo Wild Wings is a little more straightforward; where else would you need to watch a game?
There are more than 10x Division I universities than there are teams in any given league, and each of these schools have more than one sport they field. Getting the full picture of these fans can be very regional, which is why major national brands sponsor these events. We believe the college sports fan is a working professional that focuses on bettering themselves, through financial investing and investing in themselves, either through education or physical fitness. Specifically, our data shows college sports fans are 4x more likely to spend on working membership clubs, like WeWork, than the general population.
Call To Action: NCAA To Focus On Recent Graduates
As we know, the goal of the college experience is to grow and better oneself. Referencing the NCAA’s top partners, we see financial services, home improvement, automotive, hotels, and then a sudden switch to snacks, candy, and quick service restaurants (fast food) already as partners. This mix seems to appeal to the older alumni and the current students. Recent graduates fall somewhere in the middle.
The NCAA partnership mix is missing a few categories that could help recent graduates. They might not yet be ready to buy a house or a car, but they are focusing on their future. They might want to start getting into new routines to help with how they feel, how they look, and how they spend their time. Some of these habits could involve starting to plan for retirement, joining a gym (especially as most campuses take care of that for them), and taking care of themselves on a daily basis.
Conclusion
Not only has North Carolina seen high growth of basketball fans, but in 2022, Charlotte was considered the fourth fastest growing market for college grads, according to LinkedIn’s Guide To Kickstarting Your Career. The college basketball fan already exists in NC, and we’re finally seeing a rise in fandom for the professional game. An opportunity exists for the NCAA and basketball brands to evaluate and expand their partnerships in North Carolina, while leveraging the data to uncover unique insights, such as focusing on recent college graduates, to help drive growth and retention.
USE OUR MARCH MADNESS AUDIENCES: You can find Sports Innovation Lab Audiences for the segments above on Google DV360, The TradeDesk, Xandr, Yahoo, AdTheorent, & more. Simply visit these marketplaces and search for “Sports Innovation Lab” to see all our syndicated audiences. You can also append our audiences to your campaigns through LiveRamp.
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