ESPN diagnoses fans with ‘bracketbrain’ in March Madness campaign

Seeing orange? Dreaming of a UConn vs. Purdue or an Iowa vs. South Carolina rematch? You might have a case of “bracketbrain.”

That’s the term ESPN and agency partner Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners (BSSP) came up with for an annual campaign promoting ESPN’s March Madness brackets, called Tournament Challenge. Brackets have long been a mainstay for college basketball fans, and in recent years, ESPN has seen an increase in interest for both the men’s and women’s tournaments, which the company’s marketing team aims to turn into engagement with its other offerings, according to Alex Healy-Lucciola, ESPN’s senior director of brand marketing for fantasy and betting.

“Tournament Challenge is a great way for us to bring people into our ecosystem and start to expose them not only to other fantasy games, but to our other products,” Healy-Lucciola told Marketing Brew. “This is a great opportunity for us to bring a lot more folks into the ESPN digital ecosystem.”

Productivity problems

When ESPN and BSSP started researching for this year’s March Madness campaign, the team came across a commonly reported occurrence: The tournaments lead to a drop in worker productivity.

“Everyone’s glued to the screens,” BSSP ECD Sinan Dagli said. “They’re looking at their brackets…and we started thinking, ‘Maybe we need a name for this phenomenon.’”

The subsequent “Bracketbrain” campaign follows a typical worker as he wakes up in March and sees “rounds, regions, and seeds” everywhere he looks, like in the parking spaces outside his office building.

Healy-Lucciola said the creative was meant to show a holistic look at the protagonist’s day instead of showing him simply slacking off at work, which he said would be “a little too on the nose.” The 30-second spot is running across linear and digital platforms, with accompanying OOH activations like on-court signage at the March 2 Boston Celtics vs. Denver Nuggets NBA game, Healy-Lucciola said.

Something for everyone

Though not every sports fan becomes entirely consumed by their brackets come March, “Bracketbrain” is meant to come across as relatable and accessible to a wide range of fans, Dagli said. It doesn’t feature any specific athletes, so viewers don’t have to know the exact rosters to follow along, and there are several cuts that show different schools as the winning picks, Healy-Lucciola said.

This year’s creative builds on ESPN and BSSP’s Tournament Challenge campaign from last year, called “Anyone Can Bracket.” Both efforts have been geared toward driving new users to the platform: Last year’s campaign emphasized how easy it can be to pick teams, while this year’s is aimed at sparking a bit of FOMO, “almost like you’re seeing this swell take over your immediate circle of friends and family or colleagues,” Dagli said.

Last year, ESPN racked up a record 22+ million completed brackets for its men’s Tournament Challenge, up 13% from 2023, according to the company. On the women’s side, Tournament Challenge participation has more than doubled since 2019 as interest in women’s sports—and college basketball in particular—continues to climb.

This year, ESPN is looking to break participation records for both tournaments once again, Healy-Lucciola said.

“We really want this to be the most accessible sports moment on the calendar, similar to how the Super Bowl is approached,” he said.