Men’s March Madness ad inventory is all but sold out

CBS Sports and TNT Sports are “basically sold out” of ad inventory for this year’s men’s March Madness tournament, according to Jon Diament, EVP of ad sales at Warner Bros. Discovery.

“This will be the best revenue tournament we’ve ever had,” Diament said, speaking at a virtual press conference on Wednesday. “We’re setting revenue records here.”

The champs: Brands that are part of the NCAA’s official corporate partnership program account for almost half the tournament’s revenue, including new partners like Geico and Home Depot, John Bogusz, Paramount Advertising’s outgoing EVP of CBS Sports sales, said during the press conference.

• Capital One, Coca-Cola, and AT&T (which also had a major presence at NBA All-Star Weekend) represent the official NCAA corporate champions.
• Geico and Home Depot are joined by brands including Marriott Bonvoy, Unilever, and Reese’s in the official partners tier.
• Auto brands Buick and Nissan, quick-service and fast-food restaurant chains Buffalo Wild Wings, Pizza Hut, and Wendy’s, and financial services companies Intuit and Invesco are also official partners.

Those are all “significantly healthy” categories for the tournament, Diament said.

In addition to Geico’s sponsorship, the insurance category is also “very robust” in terms of its March Madness ad spend, Bogusz said. Sports betting companies, though, are locked out of the tournament, he said.

The channels: CBS Sports and TNT Sports are covering all 67 games in the men’s tournament across four national TV networks: TBS, CBS, TNT, and truTV. The games that air on CBS will also be available live via Paramount+, and the TBS, TNT, and truTV games will stream live on Max.

The ads that appear on the livestreams will be the same as the ones that linear viewers will see, Diament said, while March Madness Live will have different commercial logs.

The timeline: The ad marketplace for March Madness tends to heat up in the fall, although by that time “we’re basically already 50% sold,” since the corporate champions and partners lock in their deals years in advance, Bogusz said.

Even now, just a few days from the start of March Madness on Selection Sunday, “people are still trying to get in,” Bogusz said. But brands are mostly out of luck, except for “a handful of units” the networks earmark for the last minute, Diament said. The Final Four and championship games are particularly filled up, according to Bogusz.

Diament said that live sports event inventory tends to be a hot commodity during upfronts season due to pressures to lock in big audiences.

“People are gobbling up inventory, looking for audience guarantees way in advance, as opposed to waiting for scatter, because you take the risk when you buy something last minute that you’re going to be charged a huge premium,” he said. “I think this tournament is actually selling out quicker than it normally has.”