Advertisers bet big on March Madness as live sports ratings wane
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[March 14, 2017]
By Tim Baysinger
(Reuters) - The annual NCAA men's
basketball tournament is still among the biggest draws on the sports
calendar for advertisers looking to get in front of large audiences,
even as TV ratings drop for some major U.S. sporting events.
The past 12 months have brought a slew of close finishes for major
sports championships. But with the exceptions of the National
Basketball Association's Finals last June and Major League
Baseball's World Series in the fall, the audiences were not as large
as hoped for, underscoring that in today's shifted- viewing
environment, live sports are no longer bulletproof.
Even February's Super Bowl, the first to go into overtime, fell
victim to the NFL's season-long ratings decline.
That has put more scrutiny on pricey ad buys for big-time sporting
events. Yet advertisers are still willing to fork over major dollars
to get in front of the events' large audiences, which include young
males, among the most-coveted and hardest-to-reach demographic.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association's three-week tournament
is the second-largest generator of national TV ad dollars among all
U.S. sports' post-seasons, trailing only the NFL.
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It also is among the priciest ad buys in television. While CBS Corp
and Time Warner’s Turner Sports, which have jointly aired the
tournament since 2011, do not comment on ad rates, the price for 30
seconds of airtime during the April 3 National Championship game
ranges from $1.2 million to more than $1.5 million, according to
three sources with knowledge of negotiations.
Last year's National Championship game averaged around $1.4 million
for a 30-second spot, according to ad-tracking firm Kantar Media,
and the tournament brought in more than $1.2 billion for CBS and
Turner.
But betting big on a major sporting events that under-deliver,
especially with rising ad costs, puts marketers in a bind.
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![](../images/031417pics/sports45.jpg)
Villanova Wildcats guard Mikal Bridges (25) scrambles for a loose
ball in front of Creighton Bluejays forward Martin Krampelj (15) and
Villanova Wildcats guard Josh Hart (3) during the first half of the
Big East Conference Tournament final game at Madison Square Garden.
Mandatory Credit: Adam Hunger-USA TODAY Sports
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"You're not necessarily going to get fired for
putting more money on YouTube or more money in Google search,
Facebook or even Snapchat at it this point in time," said a media
buyer who requested anonymity. "Yet they may question you when you
say you’re going to spend $5 million on a Super Bowl spot, or $1.5
on the NCAA tourney and have it fall flat or be an unexciting game
or have it underdeliver."
For the entire 2017 tournament, ad rates are up by "mid single-digit
increases" according to John Bogusz, executive vice president of
sports sales and marketing at CBS.
Some of that is buoyed by the tournament having 19 different
corporate sponsors, three more than last year, that have ad buys
throughout the tournament.
“We got this major jump start in ad sales, because we have upwards
of 60 percent of our advertisers already in,” said Jon Diament,
executive vice president for Turner Sports ad sales.
(Reporting by Tim Baysinger; Editing by Anna Driver and Dan Grebler) [© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All
rights reserved.]
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