March Madness 2022 Will See Its Biggest Year of Total Revenue Ever
March Madness 2022 is right around the corner and that means nonstop college basketball for almost a month.
In 2021, the NCAA made an astonishing $1.16 billion for the fiscal year which ended on August 31st. A Sportico report from March 2021 detailed how that is almost solely due to March Madness.
March Madness makes up roughly 85% of the NCAA’s total annual billion dollar revenue. The NCAA’s TV deals with Turner Broadcasting and CBS make over $750 million alone.
Post-pandemic, there’s a new factor to consider in all this and that’s the proliferation of mobile betting. The amount of mobile betting that will be at play during this year’s tournament can only be predicted, but it will likely be record-breaking.
March Madness 2022: What’s Different This Year
This is the first tournament where most COVID precautions and mandates will be lifted, so that means more fans in the stands and just a generally bigger audience. Also, with the NBA getting backlash for being boring recently, March Madness could not be coming soon enough.
The Super Bowl and NFL Playoffs made record-breaking betting numbers this year with the Big Game raking in $180 million in wagers in Nevada alone. March Madness is the longest tournament in North American sports, so that means way more opportunities for mobile bettors to make wagers.
The state of New York will likely make up a massive portion of March Madness betting, as it made up around 25% of all wagers placed on the Super Bowl. The new widespread legality and ease of mobile betting are going to turn March Madness into even more of a goldmine than before. Sportsbooks like Caesar’s and DraftKings are about to make a fortune, and may honestly be even bigger winners from March Madness than the NCAA.
Even in the big states where mobile sports betting isn’t officially legal yet like California, Florida and Texas, residents have been able to get around the laws by placing bets in neighboring states.
For the Super Bowl alone, over 30 million Americans placed at least $7 billion in wagers. March Madness is much longer when you take out all the time in between games for the NFL playoffs and also has WAY more games.
In less than two weeks there’ll be a total of 68 colleges competing in a total of 67 games. The opportunity for bettors to get in on the action is going to be immense, and both the big sportsbooks and NCAA will be making an obscene amount of the tournament and everything that comes with it.
Countdown to the Big Dance
With the first tip of the “First Four” round taking place in less than two weeks, the hype leading up to March Madness cannot be quantified right now. The later rounds of March Madness will also benefit from the postponement of Major League Baseball’s opening day as the lockout has officially eaten into the season.
This will certainly peel away some Americans who normally watch opening day towards the tournament.
Everything over the past several months has worked in the tournament and its stakeholders’ favor to ensure that the revenue moving around it will be like nothing seen before. March Madness is usually a monolith, but this year just has a different feel to it.
With the anticipation continuing to bubble, it will come to a fever pitch very soon and the mobile wagers on top of the TV deals will have the NCAA making out like bandits.
