March Madness, the yearly grand finale of collegiate basketball, is one of the world’s biggest sporting events. In fact, March Madness betting is undoubtedly way bigger than Super Bowl betting, and its huge impact on the sporting industry has to be seen to be believed. The NCAA’s finances are a fascinating subject to follow, and even though the pandemic had a large impact on the proceedings, the cash flow generated by the legendary tournament is truly eye-popping.
Which NCAA Sport Makes the Most Money?
Unsurprisingly, income from March Madness is the main moneymaker of the league, and this is the subject we’ll be focusing on in this article.
In the 2016-17 season, the first time the NCAA – the college athletics’ governing body – broke the $1 billion revenue barrier, three-quarters of it could be traced back to March Madness alone. Now the season-ending mega-tournament brings in over a billion dollars by itself. 2020 marked the first time in 82 years without March Madness, and now the event is looking ready to break records again.
NCAA Lost Revenue by COVID-19
The global pandemic kneecapped many industries and caused major upheaval around the world. Sports business was no exception to that, with many live events postponed or canceled in 2020.
So how much money did the NCAA lose by canceling March Madness? Well, the cancellation of the tournament in 2020 cost the association more than half of its projected annual income, or around $800 million, a monstrous amount of money even with significant loss-of-revenue insurance they have in place, which allowed them to claw back $270 million for the year.
No matter what, the 2021 edition of the tournament had to go ahead one way or another, and the easing global pressures coupled with positive examples like the NBA bubble promised that there would be a way to get it done.
What Percent of NCAA Revenue Does March Madness Represent?
So where does NCAA get its money? As discussed above, we are looking at a billion-dollar sum here with this tournament. By 2019, the NCAA earned this sum from the finals alone, which amounted to over nine-tenths of their total revenue for the year.
Boosted by the broadcasting rights, most notably their 14-year-long behemoth deal with CBS and Turner, totaling $10.8 billion at first and $8.8 billion more after an extension signed in April 2016, locking the parties in until 2032. A combination of other media rights fees, corporate sponsorships, ticket sales (a source of nine-digit sums by themselves), and ad revenue round out the NCAA’s March Madness income stream.
Tough players don’t directly earn anything for their participation has long been a thorny subject; the NCAA claims that over 95% of its income immediately ends up with member schools, which is meant to even out the equation somewhat.
A long-running antitrust case over the matter, NCAA v. Alston, initially filed in 2014, reached the Supreme Court in April 2021, providing quite the dramatic legal backdrop to the year’s March Madness.
If the lower court ruling is upheld, it would mean that colleges could offer a wide variety of academic-related perks to top-tier players. Scholarships, paid postgraduate internships, computers, and other equipment – basically payment in all but name in what is still, strictly speaking, an amateur competition.
It is the first time since 1984 that the highest court in the land got involved with the matters of collegiate baseball when NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma (how catchy). The NCAA wanted to limit teams’ appearance on televised broadcasts in each season to protect live attendance.
Though the association lost the case, they made the most of the ruling since, regularly leaning on the judges’ opinion that the NCAA “needs ample latitude” to maintain “a revered tradition of amateurism in college sports.” Their lawyers brought this up 88 times in total in their briefs to the Supreme Court in the current case. No matter which way the ruling goes, it will have a major impact on collegiate sports in the future.
So how much money does a school get for winning the NCAA championship under the current arrangement? Well, the amount varies from year to year, but even reaching the tournament stage should net the institution somewhere around $1.67 million, paid out in annual installments over six years, according to 2014 data. A spot among the Sweet Sixteen was worth $5 million, with a Final Four run granting $3.3 million more.
There is no clear-cut formula for payouts, though, as the money is doled out to conferences rather than individual teams, which have great discretion over distributing the rewards. For smaller conferences, this can amount to over seventy percent of their annual income.
The payments can make a massive difference for lesser-known member teams should they make a deep run in the tournament. Since most collegial basketball programs are loss leaders for their institutions, these payments are invaluable.
The specific amount varies from year to year. Each March Madness game played by member schools (except for play-in games and the automatic qualifiers’ first-round matches) is worth one “unit” of the pool regardless of whether the team in question wins or not. This means the most a team can earn six units, should they make it to the final game from the first-four bracket – without such a Cinderella run, five is the maximum amount.
In 2019, a unit was worth a little over $280 000 annually, or $1.6 million over the six-year payout period. Though the pandemic scrambled the trajectory somewhat, these numbers are expected to continue to grow going forward.
How Much Is Wagered on March Madness?
According to the American Gaming Association, nearly 50 million Americans got involved with March Madness betting in 2019 to the tune of $8.5 billion. This year, mobile sports betting has further fueled the craze. It is expected that March Madness betting will break this existing record.
In 2018, when the Supreme Court overturned a law prohibiting sports betting outside Nevada, the volume of March Madness bets was 40% higher than on the Super Bowl. Unsurprisingly, the viewer base’s growth is matched by the growth of betting activity on a year-on-year basis.
Though the exact numbers are impossible to track due to the ephemeral nature of office pools and illegal betting, the American Gaming Association estimated a sum of over $10 billion in 2019, over 95% of which would be placed offshore books or local bookmakers. That doesn’t even cover the many different sorts of brackets and office pools across the country. Fun fact: these amount to over $13 billion in terms of lost worker productivity.
Final Thoughts
Now you should have a better idea of just how big a deal March Madness is and where the NCAA gets its money. Knowing just how high the stakes make it all the more fun to keep up with the event – and if you’re one of the many punters betting on March Madness, you should rest easy knowing you’re not alone out there.
COVID-19 origins, science and media, facts and fantasies
By Dr. Dan Steinbock
Recently, the joint WHO-China team released its report. Despite a year of politicized infodemic, much of the international media coverage shunned the scientific conclusions.
After months of work, the joint WHO-China team assessed the likelihood of four different possible pathways for the introduction of the virus (underlines added). Here are their conclusions:
This is not how these conclusions were reported, however.
Misguided media coverage, hate crimes
When the report was released by the WHO, international media largely ignored most of the 120-page long, highly detailed scientific report. The likeliest COVID-19 pathways were set aside or downplayed.
Instead, the focus was on the “extremely unlikely” pathway, which fostered public perception that it was the most likely one. That pathway was used to reframe the report, its conclusions and recommendations, and comments by the WHO chief Dr Tedros.
Not much has been learned from the past, grave mistakes. A year ago, some of the same media contributed to the poor COVID-19 coverage, which, as I warned in my first COVID-19 report (April 2020) would have dark consequences.
Nonetheless, media attacks did not go away, but escalated, particularly against the WHO and Dr Tedros, and China.
What followed was an “infodemic,” thanks to dominant international media, particularly social media, which contributed to the consequent rise of hate crimes against people of Asian descent, particularly in the US but also in Europe.
And as media fallacies have persisted, these crimes have turned increasingly violent.
Findings international coverage missed
What is most intriguing about the WHO team’s report is not what it discloses but what it rules out.
In an extensive exercise, the team scrutinized some 76,253 records of cases of respiratory conditions by 233 health institutions in Wuhan in October and November, before the outbreak in late 2019.”
Although 92 cases were considered to be compatible with SARS-CoV-2 infection after review,” the scientists concluded that “none was in fact due to SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
Based on data, the team “considered unlikely that any substantial transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection was occurring in Wuhan during those two months.”
Many early cases were linked with the Huanan market, but “a similar number of cases were associated with other markets and some were not associated with any markets.”
In light of facts, the team concluded that current evidence makes possible “no firm conclusion about the role of the Huanan market in the origin of the outbreak, or how the infection was introduced into the market.”
Facts, fantasies, and diplomacy
Nonetheless, after the release of the WHO report, much of dominant international media reported that Dr Tedros had put the “lab leak” theory back on the table.
A careful review of his comments, the lead scientists’ viewpoints, transcripts, and the full report suggests something different.
After a recap of the key conclusions and commendations, Dr Tedros, too, noted that the “laboratory leak” theory was the least likely pathway. But as he has stated before, there was need for further investigation, raw data, possibly additional missions. Until scientific research provides firm answers, all four pathways stay on the table, including the extremely unlikely one.
The stance can be seen as a diplomatic concession. Like the national security advisers of ex-president Trump and his State Secretary Mike Pompeo, those of Biden and Blinken still like to allude to the “lab leak” theory” or its variations. In parallel, President Biden has begun to work to return the US to the WHO, which ex-president Trump had exited.
Understandably, Dr Tedros is trying to make the US return smooth, by keeping all potential pathways on the table.
Discredited “lab leak” theory
The problem of origins has been compounded by high-level disinformation. In April 2020, New York Times, among other major US media, reported that “Trump Officials Are Said to Press Spies to Link Virus and Wuhan Labs.”
In particular, the Times warned that “some analysts are worried that the pressure from senior officials could distort assessments about the coronavirus and be used as a weapon in an escalating battle with China.”
Indeed, the “lab leak” theory” has been discredited by WHO team, most scientists, even the CIA and the Five Eyes; the intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the US.
However, the stories have had an impact. Last fall, a Cornell University study of 38 million articles in English-language media worldwide found that Trump was the single largest driver of misinformation.
The media stories were flawed but effective. By February 2021, one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab, according to Pew Research. One in four thought it had been engineered intentionally. And most blamed China.
Global COVID-19 warrants global WHO missions
What got lost in the translation was Dr Tedros’s remark that the team’s assessment may not have been “extensive enough.” That could include the possibility that the virus was around months before Wuhan, in or outside China.
There is too much partial, if inconclusive evidence of pre-Wuhan events outside China – including in Italy, France, Germany, the UK, the US and elsewhere – to be ignored.
And as Voice of America (VOA) reported only recently, scientists chasing the origins of COVID-19 are now adding Southeast Asia to the search.
A spate of recent studies has found more viruses nearly as similar to SARS-CoV-2 as the one in Yunnan, China, further afield, in Thailand and Cambodia. As Peter Daszak, a lead scientist in the WHO team noted in the VOA interview: “We haven’t done enough work in Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam to really say there aren’t even more in those countries.”.
Setting aside informed speculation, disinformation campaigns and conspiracy theorists, broader international missions are warranted to examine the origin of the COVID-19 in every relevant country.
A global pandemic warrants a global investigation.
Precedent of the so-called Asian swine flu
It would not be the first time that early attributions will later prove mistaken.
When the swine flu outbreak was first identified in Mexico City in March 2009, the Obama administration’s agricultural officials blamed it on Asia, without evidence. According to the New York Times: “In New Theory, Swine Flu Started in Asia, Not Mexico.” It led to an avalanche of media hype on the alleged Asian swine flu.
In mid-2016, over half a decade later, a scientific report by the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (NYC) attributed the 2009 H1N1 virus to pigs in central Mexico. By then, few any longer cared.
All potential COVID-19 pathways should be debated on the basis of scientific facts by the observers and the media. But media coverage should be based on the priority assessments of qualified scientists.
If facts and fantasies are considered equal in importance, fallacies and fantasies will ultimately replace facts and truths. Only science can guide appropriate public health policies.
About the Author
Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized strategist of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (USA), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net
Based on Dr Steinbock’s briefing on April 3, 2021