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Marketing Brew

March Madness

Alyssa Meyers

marketingbrew.com

No sports fan’s gameday experience is complete without scrolling social, and March Madness is no exception.

For Snapchat, the tournament is part of a broader push into sports that’s a decade in the making. It started with typical coverage—highlights from big events like rivalry games—which remains vital to the average sports fan. But with the majority of Snapchat’s audience under the age of 25 at the time of the initial push, the platform wasn’t looking to only engage the typical fan.

“Our angle became, ‘How do we capture casual fans?’” Anmol Malhotra, Snap’s head of sports partnerships, told Marketing Brew. “How do we capture the next generation of fans? The person today who doesn’t know that March Madness started…but can relate to a bracket pool with their colleagues?...So we started covering everything else—the pregame, the postgame, the fans, the locker room, and really providing a 360, immersive experience of what a major sporting event is.”

Fast-forward 10 years, and Snapchat has partnerships with major leagues like the NFL, NBA, and WNBA, as well as rights holders like 

. During the first round of March Madness, Marketing Brew pulled Malhotra away from the games to talk through Snapchat’s current approach to covering the tournament, brand activations around basketball content, and trends in the broader sports media landscape.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How are some of the schools and the brands involved in March Madness using Snapchat to engage fans?

A lot of the schools have what we call Snap Star accounts, our version of a verified account, and can post throughout the tournament, and obviously they post throughout the season. So you’ll see a lot of that across the platform. And then we’re doing a lot with brands across the platform. We have a lot of really cool things happening with Taco Bell...They have a really cool Snapchat campaign across the month of March, including a number of our products—

. We also have other big brand partners like Uber, 

, and Buffalo Wild Wings that are running snaps throughout the tournament. Beyond that are our broader content relationships. A lot of partners can cover March Madness in different ways. We have a big relationship with Warner Bros. Discovery…Turner, etc. That’s where we’re getting our coverage, but I think a lot of the coverage we’re going to get is also from the teams, the players themselves, and the people creating content for the platform.

How do you tap into those players and storylines as the tournament progresses?

There are a ton of players who will become household names in the next three weeks that no one knew who they were for the past three or four years. That’s what’s great about our platform, is that we can see that and then react to it… We lean in further and say, “Hey, we have a little bit of time to see, if we already have a relationship with some of those teams, or some of those players, how can we double-tap on some of those areas?” But we’re always really surprised in a really great way. This is the beauty of March Madness. The best analysts and bracket-pickers can have every single thing figured out, and their brackets are busted after two days because of all the craziness that happens.

Tell me a little bit more about what you mean when you say you’ll double-tap on them.

If we already have a relationship with the team or the conference, we can then say, hey, this team’s going further. We can pretty much guarantee they’re probably our Snapchat users, given their age and given our core demographic. Is there a way we can highlight them more? If the team’s already on the platform, how do we help facilitate cool content happening during the week?

What tends to happen is that these teams come out of nowhere. Through our content partners that are covering March Madness, generally speaking, we can double-tap on them and say, “Hey, let’s lean in further with some of these areas. How can we shed more light on some of these stories?” We can use some AR tools and creation tools to help amplify those as well. After the Villanova/UNC 2016 game [that ended on a] 

 from Villanova, we made a Snapchat happy celebration lens and put it over the campus of Villanova. We made a sad, crying lens filter, and we put it over the campus of UNC. Very simple. You can imagine the unbelievable content we got.

What have you seen in terms of growth of the women’s game on Snapchat in the past few years?

 on Snap, both in March Madness and the WNBA. I would argue, the women’s game has grown so much, and because of the way the men’s game has evolved, and because of those players being able to go to the NBA so quickly, I think sometimes they’ve lost that name recognition, whereas Caitlin played at Iowa the whole time. You have JuJu [Watkins] at USC this year, you have Notre Dame’s women’s team, which is incredible, you have Paige [Bueckers] at UConn, you have people that have been around, so now as a fan, you get to see people come back. I think sometimes with the changes on the men’s side, you can lose that, because you get someone who’s amazing only for one year, and then they go to the NBA. From a household-name standpoint, from a Snapchat standpoint, I would argue that there are probably more people that know more big-time players in the women’s game than the men’s game, which is amazing. Because of that, they’ve now created followings that are really sticky, because you’re following these people throughout their journey, which is really fun.

Second screens are such a big part of sports viewership now. Do you think leagues are keeping up and meeting fans where they are on their phones?

I would say for a lot of folks, it’s their primary screen…Leagues were very hesitant eight, nine, 10 years ago, of allowing their players to be super vocal on social media and on digital platforms…Now they realize all these players are a conduit to the league. If they have more of a following, the league will have more of a following, and if they do a better job, the league will do a better job, and people will tune into games even more. I think they’ve embraced that and are embracing platforms like ours, where we can provide that young, highly engaged, new fan that, candidly, they’re not reaching on the traditional properties.

Correction 04/01/2025: A previous version of this article incorrectly named Taco Bell as an NCAA sponsor; it is not.

How Snapchat is engaging ‘the next generation of fans’ during March Madness

The platform, which started covering sports about 10 years ago, works with major schools, leagues, brands, and media companies to create content around big moments.

How Snapchat is looking to engage ‘the next generation of fans’ during March Madness

College basketball isn’t the only sport that’s in season at the moment—although it may seem that way for those who can’t stop checking their March Madness brackets.

And while MassMutual, like many other brands, wanted to tap into the growing fandom around women’s college hoops, its marketers were also looking to put together a campaign with staying power beyond the tournament as part of a broader push into women’s sports.

That’s why the insurance and financial services company tapped athletes across three sports for “Stay Ready,” a campaign that marks the brand’s first big push into women’s sports since 

 with Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment last year.

“We have been sort of circling around this, and we’ve been in the women’s sports space for a number of years…so I really felt that it was important for us to get a focus and land a real strategy that would be something that would have more legs to it,” Jennifer Halloran, MassMutual’s CMO and head of marketing, told Marketing Brew.

The campaign, which stars LSU guard Flau’jae Johnson, Angel City FC forward Christen Press, and Australian Open champion Madison Keys, kicked off during the NCAA tournament, Halloran said, and additional elements are planned for the rest of the year.

 leading the campaign follows Johnson, Press, and Keys training through intense conditions, like Keys on the court at night and Press on the pitch in the rain. Johnson, who has the benefit of an indoor training facility, is shown enduring an ice bath. Johnson narrates, explaining that “preparation is everything, on the court and off.”

“There’s a common phrase in the sports world around ‘stay ready so you don’t have to get ready,’” said 

, founder and CEO of Deep Blue, which worked with MassMutual on the spot; the saying “is the ultimate metaphor” for financial planning, she added. The spot also depicts athletes alongside trainers to convey the idea that preparation involves a team, which in the financial world translates to advisors, Correnti said.

The campaign is rooted in findings that 40% of women “feel like they don’t have a good handle on their financial plan or the financial tools and resources,” Halloran said, and it’s meant to increase MassMutual’s brand awareness and consideration, especially among women.

 Johnson was a clear choice for the campaign given she’s playing in March Madness, Keys is coming off her first Grand Slam title, and Press recently returned to the pitch as the 

 season ramps up, making the rollout especially timely for all three athletes. The debut of the campaign also coincided with Women’s History Month, Halloran said.

In addition to the fortuitous timing, the athletes were chosen because they represent women at different life stages, which may mean they have different financial goals. Johnson is just starting her career and financial planning journey, Press is a bit more seasoned, at “what we call the ‘protect’ age, where she’s staying in her lane right now and staying in the financial planning process of where she is,” Halloran said, and Keys is in a position to grow her wealth after years of playing pro tennis.

Plus, they’re all multi-hyphanates, Correnti added; Johnson has her music career, Press runs the lifestyle and media brand 

, and Keys founded the nonprofit Kindness Wins.

 Beyond a “roughly even” media buy across men’s and women’s March Madness, the campaign is running on sports platforms like 

, the Golf Channel, and the Tennis Channel, as well as on podcasts like 

No Offseason: The Athletic Women’s Basketball Show

, according to Correnti. It’ll also be on streaming platforms like Max, Hulu, and Disney+.

While women are front-and-center in the ads, Correnti stressed that the campaign is designed to have wide appeal.

“This isn’t a women's sports campaign, this is a MassMutual financial brand campaign,” Correnti said. “It could have been very easy to run this female athlete–focused spot in women’s sports specifically, but I think we would then be doing a disservice to…what we’re trying to convey.”

NCAA basketball star Flau’jae Johnson, tennis champion Madison Keys, and World Cup winner Christen Press appear side-by-side in front of a navy blue background

MassMutual kicks off brand campaign with athlete-led March Madness ad

The 60-second spot stars LSU star guard Flau’jae Johnson, the NWSL’s Christen Press, and tennis pro Madison Keys.

Four years ago, the women’s NCAA tournament wasn’t even technically called March Madness. Fast-forward to last year, and the women’s championship game had 

 than the men’s for the first time, as players like 

, Kamilla Cardoso, and Cameron Brink became household names over the course of the tournament.

Then, as college seniors tend to do, they graduated.

Even though this year’s rosters look a little different than last year’s, brand interest—and ad prices—seem as high as ever. Players like Paige Bueckers, Flau’jae Johnson, and JuJu Watkins remain in high demand in ad campaigns, and marketers are also betting on other athletes representing the next generation of talent.

“It’s about freaking time,” Jeff Kearney, global head of sports marketing at Gatorade, told Marketing Brew. “What is coming through, especially with women’s basketball, is the personalities, the human elements…People don’t talk about Celtics/Lakers, they talk about Bird/Magic, so adding those names and those personalities is just really incredible and invaluable to making people care and pay attention.”

After last year’s record ratings, Disney 

 of ad inventory for this year’s women’s championship game on ESPN by the end of 2024, and as of mid-March, prices for remaining inventory were about double what they were last year, according to Elliot Rifkin, group lead, services at TV ad platform Tatari.

Spreading media buys across both properties has become 

, and Ryan Briganti, EVP and head of sports sales for Paramount Advertising, said interest in the women’s tournament has helped bolster sales for the men’s game.

“It’s definitely something that is helping the overall marketplace, and there’s no doubt about brands leaning in on both,” Briganti told reporters during a press conference earlier this month.

While companies like Gatorade, Mondelez, and Intuit are incorporating both men and women athletes in March Madness campaigns this year, other brands are leaning fully on women players, some of whom have multi-year 

Johnson, who plays for the LSU Tigers, has been a mainstay during the tournament’s ad breaks, appearing in commercials for brands like 

. Bueckers, who plays for the UConn Huskies, is in ads for 

. Watkins, who’s out of the tournament for USC with an ACL tear, stars alongside Bueckers in the Gatorade spot and is in campaigns for Mondelez and 

Watkins is “obviously someone that the consumers connect with,” Tanya Berman, SVP of biscuits at Mondelez, said, while Johnson has “stardom written all over her for the future,” according to Kevin Everhart, chief growth officer for consumer services at Experian. Bueckers, meanwhile, is “one of the most influential college athletes in basketball” who has “been at the forefront of the NIL movement since Day 1,” Danielle Roark, marketing director for Intuit, said.

Berman acknowledged that even a few years ago, it could be hard for brands to find women athletes with such reach, but that doesn’t seem to be a barrier these days.

“They have such a presence, and they all have unique personalities, and they’re really visible,” she said.

It’s not only the biggest stars in women’s hoops who are attracting brand deals. Gatorade’s Kearney rattled others off with ease: “LSU is stacked, 

, Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice at UCLA, Madison Booker at Texas, Hannah Hidalgo at Notre Dame,” he said. “You can go down the list, and we’d love to sign everybody.”

Gatorade can’t, of course, but other brands are inking deals. Intuit TurboTax, for instance, has partnered with Rice for two years, and in that time, she’s increased her follower base on Instagram by 25,000, Roark said. “With UCLA earning a No. 1 seed this year, we expect her brand to reach even bigger heights,” she said. Rice and Betts are also front and center in an AT&T 

March Madness has long been known for its Cinderella stories—or bracket breakers, depending on who you ask—and because any team might have a stand-out moment, brands have lots of options. C4 recently signed 128 college basketball players, including Booker and Betts, as part of a program called the C4 Bracket Breakers, the energy-drink brand’s first major push into the tournament, according to Craig Lyon, SVP of brand marketing at C4 parent company Nutrabolt. The move is meant to differentiate C4 and create an association with top athletes while also building relationships with potential future stars, he said.

“You see these kids come out of nowhere and suddenly become household names, whether it be for a few months or a few years, or it jump-starts your career,” Lyon said. “We’re looking at this as an opportunity to get some introduction and some real interaction with athletes who could very much be the next generation of mainstays.”

For its first March Madness campaign, mental health platform BetterHelp sought out women athletes who have been “vocal and vulnerable about their mental health,” Head of Marketing Sara Brooks said. The brand tapped Rice, Zoe Brooks of NC State, and Chance Grey of Ohio State for a campaign called “Stop the Madness” meant to raise awareness of mental health struggles among athletes.

That qualifier narrowed down the pool of potential athlete partners, and “I don’t think that we could have made the determination purely based on schools” anyway, Brooks said, since it’s near impossible to predict who will go the distance.

Gym Weed, an “athletic focus drink,” inked its first official NIL partnership with Harvard’s Harmoni Turner right before the university received its No. 10 seed and Turner was named The Associated Press women’s college basketball player of the week, President Shane McCassy said.

Harvard fell to Michigan State in the first round, but McCassy said he’s still excited to be partnered with Turner, who has 98,000 followers on TikTok and 63,000 on Instagram. Turner’s deal with Gym Weed includes three TikToks, three Instagram Stories, a collab post, and a giveaway over the course of three months as Turner turns her sights to the WNBA draft, according to Michaela Simon, VP of content and operations at The Network Advisory, which reps Turner for brand deals.

“She already has an audience that just loves her for her, so that’s the dream for a brand, to have a genuine audience following you already,” Simon said. “It’s only up from here.”

Correction 03/28/2025: This article has been updated to show the name of C4

Collaged images of Paige Bueckers and JuJu Watkins in a Gatorade and State Farm ad. (Credit: Illustration: Anna Kim, Photos: @Gatorade, @StateFarm/YouTube)

Women’s March Madness boomed in 2024. Can 2025 maintain the momentum? 

Brand execs are finding no shortage of on- and off-court talent for campaigns, and “we’d love to sign everybody,” one exec said.

The March Madness rankings have been released, and not just the No. 1 seeds.

The University of Connecticut Huskies, a No. 2 seed in this year’s tournament, were the most marketable women’s team, according to the NIL platform Out2Win.

The team scored 96 out of 100, according to Out2Win’s 2025 March Madness 

, which highlights the schools and athletes participating in this year’s NCAA tournament that it has determined are especially marketable. The company determines a school’s marketability based on the average score of its athletes, which is calculated by an algorithm that evaluates factors like performance of paid social media posts, engagement rates, and follower growth, according to CEO Jack Adler.

On-court performance doesn’t always correlate with marketing partnership potential, but while the majority of the most marketable teams in the men’s and women’s tournaments are No. 1 or No. 2 seeds, there were a couple of underdogs that Out2Win ranked as highly marketable.

In addition to topping the list of most marketable women’s teams, the Huskies dominated the rankings of individual women basketball players based on Out2Win’s marketability scores:

Paige Bueckers, the Huskies guard who’s considered “

” as this year’s No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft, led Out2Win’s rankings with a score of 98.

Fellow Huskies Azzi Fudd, KK Arnold, and Aubrey Griffin also made the top five.

USC Trojans guard JuJu Watkins broke up the UConn cohort at No. 2, with a score of 96.

The only other team with multiple athletes in the top 10 was the University of South Carolina Gamecocks, last year’s champs. Forward Chloe Kitts came in at No. 6 on the rankings, and guard MiLaysia Fulwiley was ranked No. 9.

The No. 1-seeded Gamecocks were deemed Out2Win’s second-most marketable team, followed by the No. 3 seed LSU Tigers; Tigers guard 

 was ranked No. 8 on the individual athletes list.

 The Duke Blue Devils, a No. 1 seed and a favorite to win the championship this year, were the most marketable men’s team, with a score of 94, according to the report.

Duke star Cooper Flagg, the projected No. 1 pick in this year’s NBA draft who’s been out with an ankle injury, was the top men’s basketball athlete, scoring a 95, and teammate Isaiah Evans also made the top five.

The North Carolina Tar Heels were the second-most marketable men’s basketball team, with a score of 92 and two players—Ian Jackson and RJ Davis—on the top 10 list. Though a top team from the mid ’70s through the aughts, the Tar Heels are a No. 11 seed this year. The Michigan State Spartans, a No. 2 seed, took the third spot of the men’s teams, with a marketability score of 90.

During the 2024-25 season, the Ohio State Buckeyes had the most athlete brand deals on the men’s side at 20, per the report, followed by the Florida Gulf Coast Eagles and the Tar Heels. The Huskies led the pack of the women’s teams with 44 deals, followed by the Texas Longhorns and the Tigers.

Though the top three women’s teams had more total brand deals than the top three men’s teams, the men saw bigger deals and higher earnings, Out2Win found:

The median social media brand deal size for a male college basketball player this season was $576, up 130% from last season, and their median total earnings from social deals was $10,572.

For the women, the media deal size was $250, up 5% from last season, with median total earnings of $1,870.

Marquette v. UConn women's college basketball game March 2025

UConn women, Duke men are most marketable March Madness teams: report

Both teams are led by the projected WNBA and NBA No. 1 draft picks, respectively. 

Selection Sunday for March Madness isn’t for another couple of days, but some brands just couldn’t wait any longer to kick off their campaigns.

Powerade, the official hydration partner of March Madness and official sports drink of the NCAA, rolled out its campaign in February. The central ad follows a fictional basketball player as opposed to a real college star, but Powerade also teamed up with a handful of current players to help amplify its message as it looks to compete with Gatorade.

Last year, Powerade partnered with Simone Biles for an 

 focused on mental health, and so far this year, has set its sights on soccer, becoming the official sports drink of MLS and US Soccer. Now, it’s turning to the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments in an effort to connect with younger consumers and go after the “leading brand” in the sports drink space, according to Tom Gargiulo, CMO of BodyArmor Sports Nutrition, which oversees the Powerade brand under Coca-Cola.

“We pride ourselves on being the underdog, what we call ‘underestimated to undeniable,’” Gargiulo told Marketing Brew. “We wanted to tell the story of not only this athlete, but also of our brand…With some hard work and some hard effort, we’ll be able to hopefully get to the top.”

The brand’s national campaign, “It Takes More to Get This Far,” features a 30-second TV spot called “

” that follows a fictional college basketball player through training, injury, recovery, and, eventually, cutting the net as a national champ. It’s set to run through the tournament on streaming, CTV, social media, and out-of-home, with accompanying retail and on-site activations.

Gargiulo said his team opted not to spotlight a real-life player in order to keep the focus on the brand in the commercial, but Powerade has tapped more than 35 athletes with NIL deals to amplify the campaign on social and other digital platforms. The lineup includes UConn forward Alex Karaban, University of Arizona guard Caleb Love, and NC State guard Saniya Rivers.

This year is Powerade’s third in a row as a March Madness advertiser, and Gargiulo said the broad reach of the tournament and the subsequent awareness boosts during what’s otherwise considered a downtime in the sports-drink market has kept the brand activating more each year. Increasing sales is always the main goal of any Powerade marketing campaign, he said, but the March Madness push is also geared toward raising the brand’s profile among Gen Z, an effort that’s been underway for a couple of years.

“They’re starting to enter the workforce, and they’re starting to generate buying power,” Gargiulo said. “We want to make sure that we’re the sports drink of choice when they’re reaching for their hydration.”

Powerade’s 2025 March Madness media spend includes a “substantial buy” in the women’s tournament, Gargiulo said, which last year saw 

 from advertisers. The women’s tournament 

 in 2023 as well, when current WNBA stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese rose to national prominence, but Powerade wasn’t investing quite as much on the women’s side that year, Gargiulo told us.

“We saw it as a pretty huge miss,” he said.

This year, in addition to running ads and activating on site at both the men’s and women’s tournaments, Powerade tapped LSU guard and rapper Flau’jae Johnson for an additional 30-second spot that features an original track by Johnson and Lyrical Lemonade.

, has collaborated with Powerade for the past couple of tournaments, and this year’s work represents an increase in her involvement, Gargiulo said. As with all the athletes in the campaign, he said, the Powerade team was looking for players with an “underdog mentality” to match the brand messaging, as well as significant platforms; Johnson has 2 million followers on Instagram and 1.6 million on TikTok.

Her involvement will ideally help the brand further connect with Gen Z, Gargiulo said.

“Our goal is to tap into a much younger demographic, and I think this campaign, with the music video that Flau’jae put together for us, will help us do that, not only through our social channels, but even [through] the eyes that we’ll have during the tournament,” he said. “It’s going to help us do some awesome things and create a very sustainable path for growth for the future.”

Basketball player in Powerade's 2025 March Madness ad

How one sports-drink brand is powering up its March Madness campaign

Powerade is running ads against the men’s and women’s tournaments and working with college stars like LSU guard Flau’jae Johnson in an effort to reach Gen Z consumers.

The good people of Gotham City can finally rest easy—Bateman is ready to defend them.

No, that’s not a typo. It’s the premise of State Farm’s latest brand campaign, which is tipping off just in time for March Madness. Unlike many of the ads running during the college basketball tournament, State Farm’s won’t feature any athletes. Instead, it stars Jason Bateman and features cameos from other celebrities and creators, which Head of Marketing Alyson Griffin said she expects will help State Farm stand out to March Madness viewers.

“If we’re in football, there’s a football player; if you’re in basketball, a basketball player; when we’re in gaming, we use gamers,” she told Marketing Brew. “The reason is because it does break through when people are in that mindset, but this is, we believe, a pretty special campaign. It’s the bigness of it, the theatricalness of it, the storytelling with the different villains…that will break through.”

,” depicts some of the usual suspects from the Batman franchise, except Bateman isn’t exactly effective as a crime-fighter. “Having insurance isn’t the same as having State Farm,” Jake From State Farm says in the spot. “It’s like getting Bateman when you need the protection of Batman.”

In addition to Bateman and Jake, the ad features SZA as Catwoman, YouTuber Jordan Howlett (aka Jordan Thee Stallion) as Commissioner Gordon, and YouTuber and Twitch streamer Kai Cenat as a civilian. The wide-ranging cast is meant to appeal to “a very broad audience,” Griffin said.

 Putting social media personalities on linear TV in a general-market campaign can be a risk, but with a relatively small media budget compared to their competitors in the insurance space, “we have to punch above our weight,” Griffin said. Brands in the insurance industry spent an estimated $2.55 billion on national linear TV ads last year, according to data from iSpot.

Early reactions to the campaign, she said, have indicated the risk could pay off. Ahead of its official debut on Tuesday, Cenat 

, and Griffin said in comments, some people immediately recognized Howlett as Gordon.

“He created this flurry of buzz, which helped us know…we got that right,” she said. “My dad watching March Madness, who’s 80 years old, would absolutely not know. He’d assume there was an actor standing there. But those who know, know.”

 The ad, which is running through both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, represents a departure from State Farm’s “Right Kind of Magic” brand platform. That campaign started running in 2023 and features celebrities and athletes like 

 mistakenly showing up in situations where people need State Farm instead.

 also broke from that platform with a message targeted at young adults being “severed” from their parents’ insurance plans. “Bateman vs. Batman” is meant as a follow-up for a more general audience, Griffin said, but the brand is still running ads as part of “Right Kind of Magic.”

 As part of the new campaign, Cenat hosted a livestream on Tuesday featuring giveaways and an appearance from Jake, Griffin said, a move that’s “completely different for us and for our category,” she said. Cenat will debut the extended cut of the ad during the stream, and the 60-second cut will start running on linear Saturday. There will also be cuts running across digital video, streaming, CTV, audio, and social channels.

While Jake was on the stream, Griffin said she can’t confirm if he’ll be courtside at any of the March Madness games. Given his track record for showing up at major sporting events, though, never say never.

Jason Bateman as Bateman, along with Batman, in a State Farm commercial

Jason Bateman as Batman in State Farm commercial

State Farm taps Jason Bateman, not athletes, for March Madness ad

The insurance brand’s campaign, “Bateman vs. Batman,” is meant to appeal to a wide base of viewers during and after the college basketball tournament.

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.”

When ESPN and BSSP started researching for this year’s March Madness campaign, the team came across a 

 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.’”

” 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.

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 “

.” 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 

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.

Cocky, the mascot for the University of South Carolina, and Duke's The Blue Devil appear in a cubicle in an image from ESPN's March Madness 2025 campaign