On a Thursday afternoon in March, a mid-level accountant in Tulsa stops working.

He doesn’t mean to.

A spreadsheet sits open. Numbers that matter. Numbers someone will ask about later.

On the other screen, a basketball game between two schools he couldn’t have found on a map that morning.

He checks the score. Five minutes.

Then the underdog goes on a run.

And something strange happens. The spreadsheet doesn’t disappear. It just stops existing.

If you were designing the most efficient sporting event in America, you wouldn’t build this.

You wouldn’t schedule 67 games in three weeks.
You wouldn’t invite teams that no one knows.
You wouldn’t let one bad night end everything.

It’s inefficient. Messy. Almost careless.

Which is what makes it valuable.

The NCAA understands something most leagues try to eliminate:

Uncertainty isn’t a bug. It’s the feature.

March Madness compresses everything. Time. Margin for error. Certainty.

Most games don’t matter.

Until one suddenly matters more than anything else that day.

A 12-seed wins. A walk-on hits a buzzer-beater.

And for a moment, everyone is watching the same thing.

Not because they planned to.

Because they don’t want to miss it.

Let’s break it down into 4 big questions:
1) Who are the favorites in this year's tournament?
2) Which schools spend the most money on basketball?
3) How many people watch the NCAA basketball tournament?
4) How important are March Madness media rights to the NCAA?

Previous March Madness: 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2019 | 2018

Who are the favorites in this year's tournament?

Favorites on the men’s side:
1) Duke Blue Devils
2) Michigan Wolverines
3) Arizona Wildcats
4) Florida Gators
5) Houston Cougars

FYI: Last year, there were only 13 underdog victories, which was the lowest since the field expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

Translation: The product underperformed.

Because nobody remembers dominance.

They remember disruption.

Favorites on the women’s side:
1) UConn Huskies
2) UCLA Bruins
3) Texas Longhorns
4) South Carolina Gamecocks
5) LSU Tigers

Which schools spend the most money on basketball?

Men’s basketball expenses for top seeds (Sportico):
1) Duke Blue Devils - $25M
2) Arizona Wildcats - $16M
3) Michigan Wolverines - $16M
4) Florida Gators - $10M

Top women’s basketball expenses:
1) LSU Tigers - $11.87M
2) UConn Huskies - $11.86M

Big shift: LSU and South Carolina spend more on their women’s program than the men’s!

How many people watch the NCAA basketball tournament?

Average viewership for men’s March Madness (Nielsen):
1) 2016 - 9.4M (↓ 17%)
2) 2017 - 10.8M (↑ 15%)
3) 2018 - 9.7M (↓ 10%)
4) 2019 - 10.5M (↑ 8%)
5) 2020 - N/A
6) 2021 - 9.5M (↓ 10%)
7) 2022 - 10.7M (↑ 13%)
8) 2023 - 9.6M (↓ 11%)
9) 2024 - 9.9M (↑ 3%)
10) 2025 - 10.2M (↑ 3%)

Average viewership for women’s March Madness (Nielsen):
1) 2019 - 670K
2) 2020 - N/A
3) 2021 - 550K (↓ 18%)
4) 2022 - 630K (↑ 15%)
5) 2023 - 1.0M (↑ 59%)
6) 2024 - 2.2M (↑ 120%)
7) 2025 - 1.2M (↓ 45%)

How important are March Madness media rights to the NCAA?

The 2026 tournament will be the first time that the combined media rights (men’s and women’s) will surpass $1B.

Recent media rights deals (% change) for men’s March Madness, (Indianapolis Business Journal):
1) 1994 - 7 years @ $1.7B → $247M/year
2) 2003 - 11 years @ $6.0B → $545M/year (↑ 121%)
3) 2010 - 14 years @ $10.8B → $771M/year (↑ 41%)
4) 2016 - 8 years @ $8.8B → $1.1B/year (↑ 43%)

Recent media rights deals (% change) for wommen’s March Madness (Kagan):
1) 2011 - 13 years @ $500M → $39M/year
2) 2024 - 8 years @ $920M → $115M/year (↑ 195%)

The 2025 women’s tournament still delivered a 11% lower cost per viewer ($96) than the men’s tournament ($108).

March Madness media rights account for 64% of the NCAA's total revenue. If you step back and look at the past decade, you will see this has declined from 79% in 2015.

Bottom Line

March Madness looks inefficient.

It’s not.

It’s perfectly optimized for the only metric that matters:

Can you make millions of people care about the same thing at the same time?

For three weeks a year, the answer is yes.

And that’s worth a billion dollars.