With each passing year, the growing popularity of the March Madness continues to astound me.

In fact, according research from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an estimated 3 million employees recently said they would spend between one and three hours per day watching this year’s tournament during work hours, potentially costing American companies more than $134 million in “lost wages” over the first two days of March Madness alone. Of course, that assumes each of those workers would have been productive otherwise, which is certainly a debatable topic in its own right.

Now don’t get me wrong. I love college basketball and recognize the many reasons the NCAA tournament is so alluring, from its rowdy fans to the inevitable stunning upsets and the obvious irony that unpaid players can consistently bring such passion to the game.

Watching the games
Of course, this unique mix helped drive nearly 21 million people to watch last year’s championship game and helps explain why CBS and Time Warner‘s  Turner Broadcasting were willing to pay $10.8 billion three years ago to secure broadcast rights for the tournament through 2024, outbidding rival offers at the time from such competitors as Fox and Disney‘s ABC and ESPN.

Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, that easily eclipsed CBS‘s previous $6 billion, 11-year deal that began in 2003 and absolutely dwarfs the old seven-year, $1.725 billion agreement that ran from 1995 through the end of 2002.

Watching the ads
So why, exactly, did CBS and Turner have to pay so much this time around? According to research firm Kantar Media, NCAA men’s basketball last year became the first-ever postseason sport for which national TV ad spending exceeded the $1 billion mark.

You read that right: March Madness ad spending in 2012 managed to outpace even the NFL‘s postseason take, which came in at a respectable $976.3 million. What’s more, advertisers spent more dough on the NCAA tournament in 2012 alone than on the NBA, MLB, and the NHL postseasons combined.

In addition, those companies were willing to spend more than $1.3 million for each 30-second spot in last year’s NCAA championship game, or more than triple the cost of an ad to appear in the NBA championship series games. Even still, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Super Bowl commercials still took the cake in 2012 at an average cost of $3.5 million.

So who’s willing to spend those big bucks to get their names out to the masses? General Motors was last year’s whale, dropping a grand total of $80.3 million and leaving AT&T a distant second at $54.2 million. Naturally, Anheuser-Busch InBev and Coca-Cola were both eager to quench viewers’ thirst, throwing down $31.9 million and $31.7 million, respectively.

There was also no shortage of restaurant advertisements from the likes of Dominos Pizza and Yum! Brands-owned Pizza Hut, but the well-suited and comparatively small Buffalo Wild Wings — which incidentally remains a prominent NCAA sponsor this year — seemed to have gotten the best bang for its buck in 2012. Despite not even showing up in …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance