After two rocky, pandemic-ridden years, March Madness we all know very well is coming back.
The 2022 Men's NCAA Tournament starts Thursday on CBS Sports and Turner Sports. Disney Properties ABC and ESPN will broadcast the women's NCAA Tournament starting Friday.
Executives from Paramount Global and WarnerMedia spoke Tuesday to promote March Madness, which promises to pay nearly $1 billion in ad revenue on behalf of the men.
"The country is ready for the [NCAA] tournament," said CBS Sports president Sean McManus.
"We're getting back to normal," said Turner Sports president Lenny Daniels. "And we want to take that and go a step further."
The network lost the 2020 NCAA Tournament due to Covid. The 2021 event was held in a bubble and saw the Baylor Bears win their first NCAA men's basketball championship.
But this year's tournament will include a return to old programs at Duke and Kentucky - both missed out on last year's tournament - and legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski with the Blue Devils chasing their final title.
Can the men's tournament captivate 20 million spectators?
The output of this year's NCAA Tournament isn't changing much. Games will again feature a virtual shot clock on the court. There will be in-game coach interviews, and integrated rail and sky cameras will be seen in broadcasts over the final four games.
But will there be more viewers than last year?
The 2021 NCAA Championship game between undefeated Gonzaga and Baylor drew an average of 16.9 million viewers for CBS Sports, a 14% drop from the 2019 game. It was also the least-watched championship broadcast on CBS since the network began airing the games in 1982.
The 2021 men's Final Four Games drew an average of 14.9 million spectators.
The NCAA men's tournament returned to Turner Sports this year for the first time since 2018, when Villanova defeated the University of Michigan. That title game attracted nearly 16.5 million viewers.
CBS and Turner have rotated the Final Four since 2016. The last time an NCAA men's championship game topped 20 million came in 2017 when the University of North Carolina played Gonzaga. That game attracted about 22 million viewers.
On Tuesday's call, McManus wouldn't predict audiences around the 2022 tournament, but "good games, good story, and as we know when a Cinderella pops up, it's good for ratings."
He also noted that more major events returning to the tournament should help with viewership. In addition, measurement company Nielsen will combine outdoor viewership with final metrics. Out-of-home TV counts in places like airports, restaurants, and sports bars. Nielsen previously provided only domestic metrics for its Linear TV reports.
McManus said Nielsen's decision to combine the metrics "is good for the network and good for our sponsors, and it provides a really accurate count of how many people are consuming our content."
On the women's front, Disney is expected to top last year's title game between Arizona and Stanford. The contest attracted an average of 4 million viewers and was the most viewed women's contest since 2014.
The women's 2021 semifinal games featuring Stanford and South Carolina drew an average of 1.6 million spectators, while the University of Arizona's loss to the University of Connecticut drew 2.6 million spectators, 24% more than the 2019 second semifinal competition. The Sweet 16 games, aired on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, averaged 918,000 viewers, a 67% increase from 2019.
March madness ads are sold out
The advertising listing around the 2022 men's tournament is sold out, said John Bogus, executive vice president of the sales department for CBS Networks. Thirty-two places for the tournament range from hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first round to more than $2 million for the NCAA title game.
Bogusz said the automotive, insurance and fast-food categories are "very active and very strong this year." Movie studios are also returning to the advertising rotation, while travel and technology companies will also be promoting around games.
TV advertising measurement company iSpot estimates that advertising spending around the 2021 men's basketball tournament was about $1.05 billion, a 21.4% increase from the 2019 tournament. The firm told CNBC that AT&T was the biggest spender at $74.7 million for commercials around the 2021 tournament. Capital One spent $48.7 million on commercials for Geico ($46.7 million), Buick ($39.5 million) and Progressive ($37.7 million).
Elaborated on projections and asked whether advertising spending around the 2022 men's tournament would be above $1 billion, Bogus did not disclose specifics, but said the projection is "in the range".
Elaborated on projections and asked whether advertising spending around the 2022 men's tournament would be above $1 billion, Bogus did not disclose specifics, but said the projection is "in the range".
Turner Sports chief revenue officer John Diamant referred to the ad spend, saying, "It's pretty impressive." Diament noted how long it takes the network to air the games - "three weeks of activity ... it's excellent enough that we can get that money in just three weeks of flight."
Last September, the NCAA said that the 2022 NCAA Women's Tournament would be subsumed into the March Madness brand. The decision comes after mounting pressure and criticism over the organization's original stance on using the trademark only for men's tournaments.
EPSN said it has also sold its inventory for the women's tournament. 22 advertisers including Apple, General Motors, Target and T-Mobile will run ads during the Games.
The game programming advertising market remains the top buy for advertisers. The National Football League's Super Bowl remains the most expensive inventory ever. CNBC's parent company NBCUniversal charged approximately $6.5 million for Super Bowl 56 commercials, and some brands paid a record-high $7 million for a 30-second ad.
Still, the high prices surrounding sports programming aren't intimidating to companies. Bogusz said that "advertisers in all demo groups are allocating additional dollars" to purchase inventory.
"It offers the best drama in all of television, and for many advertisers, it's still the most engaging programming you can have," McManus said. "And that includes the NCAA Tournament."
When asked whether the NCAA men's tournament would increase to $3 million per 30 seconds when CBS returned to the schedule in 2023, Bogus replied: "I wouldn't say it would be that much. But as We are moving forward, we are expecting a hike in the prices."
War contingency plan
While networks are welcoming a return to March Madness as usual, contingency plans are in place to update the top news of the moment - Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"There are more important things happening in the world than the NCAA tournament right now," McManus said. "No one is going to pretend that court action is as important as the life-and-death action in Ukraine," he said.
McManus referred to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq to explain how the network would approach coverage. He said the network would update the war in Ukraine as needed and "handle it in the best way we can."
"We have two great production companies and two great news organizations," Daniels said, referring to CBS News and CNN. "I think we'll make the right decision."