Nike and AT&T were among the advertisers that dominated with brand messaging and prominence during the NCAA college men’s and women’s basketball tournaments this year, according to a new report from media insights firm Samba TV.
The report showed AT&T had the largest ad reach across both tournaments, while the Nike logo appeared more frequently during the women’s tournament compared to the men’s, the latter of which is colloquially known as “March Madness.”
Coca-Cola and Geico had the strongest positive sentiment and “positive chatter” among sponsors across the tournaments, as did LG and Nabisco. Capital One had the lowest negative sentiment among NCAA tournament advertisers, though it likely had little to do with sports and more to do with politics; chatter around Capital One largely involved a lawsuit brought by businesses associated with President Donald Trump and his administration’s concerns over Capital One’s planned merger with Discover.
March Madness started and ended strong, with smart TVs integrated with Samba’s measurement solution reporting a 19 percent increase in viewership for the Final Four and an 18 percent audience lift with the Championship game.
The women’s tournament logged viewership declines without Caitlin Clark, who exited the NCAAW to join the WNBA this season. Still, it had a higher baseline audience compared to 2022, Samba TV said.
Paramount Global’s CBS and Warner Bros Discovery’s TNT Sports have the domestic TV rights to the March Madness tournament, while the Walt Disney Company broadcasts the NCAAW tournament on ESPN and ABC.
The NCAA March Madness Championship game attracted 11.8 million U.S. households to CBS, up 18 percent compared to 2024. It was the most-viewed game of the tournament, Samba TV said.
“Duke’s fall from grace felt straight out of prestige TV — White Lotus meets March Madness,” Ashwin Navin, the co-Founder and CEO of Samba TV, said in a statement, drawing on the popular HBO drama that ended its third season on Sunday.
“The tournament opened strong, pulling in 54 percent higher viewership in Round 1 than 2024,” Navin continued. “While momentum dipped in the middle rounds, Duke’s run reignited the frenzy, pushing viewership up 19 percent in the Final Four. And even after Duke’s epic collapse, the drama held, with Houston and Florida driving viewership 18 percent higher than last year’s finale. Go Gators.”
Likewise, the NCAAW tournament attracted around 13.2 million households, a strong showing of viewership for the tournament, even if its average audience was lower than the past season.
“The Caitlin Clark effect was impossible to ignore, especially in her absence,” said Navin noted. “Without the tournament’s breakout star, this year’s women’s March Madness saw viewership plummet, with audiences dropping off round after round. For the championship match between UConn and South Carolina, viewership was down 56 percent year over year.”
While Clark’s absence didn’t help the NCAAW, it has helped other stakeholders who have rights to WNBA games: The E. W. Scripps Company saw a 133 percent increase in women’s basketball games on its Ion network in 2024 compared to the prior year, spurred by higher interest after Clark was drafted to the Indiana Fever, according to Nielsen data.
Across both tournaments, viewership was higher among Black households; the March Madness tournament over-indexed with Black audiences by 23 percent, Samba TV said.
Samba TV’s data is based on smart TVs where consumers have opted-in to measurement and tracking; for this reason, data reported from Samba TV tends to be lower than figures cited by Nielsen and Comscore, which use a mixture of audience panels, connected TV measurement and first-party data.
