The Economic Impact of March Madness

With the NCAA Men's Final Four set to take place next weekend I thought the tournament was a perfect example to use to demonstrate sport and the economy's relationship to one another.  On March 15th in my American Sport in the 21st Century class, we discussed sport and the economy.  We outlined how money is foundation of sports at all levels, and the various aspects of how economics drives sport.  After looking through a few different articles on tournament, I found an article from Forbes that I thought incorporated a lot of what we talked about in my class.  Here is a link to the article:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/simonogus/2016/03/17/the-economic-impact-of-the-ncaa-basketball-tournament-from-first-four-to-final-four/#4c85c1d8d438

The first connection that I made after reading this article was a sport entity using their status as a monopoly to negotiate huge media rights fees for the Tournament.  CBS/ Turner spent an estimated $10-$11 billion dollars on their current deal to broadcast the tournament.  The second connection I made to my class discussion was that owners (in this case universities & conferences) benefit economically from sport.  The conferences participating in the tournament got a cut of $205 million between the media rights and ticket sales produced from the tournament.  The last connection that I made was public assistance being provided for team owners (in this case the City Houston).  The state of Texas gave the city of Houston an $8 million dollar subsidy to help aid in putting on the Final Four.  This is a case of people who do not necessarily care about a sport having to pay to help put an event on.  The economic benefit comes from the $300 million in revenue the city expects to make during the Final Four.  Pittsburgh radio personality, Mark Madden, did a good job of explaining the real goal of the NCAA tournament in a blog post where he was ranting about bracketologists (link below). 

http://www.1059thex.com/onair/mark-madden-25939/wtf-is-a-bracketologist-14484392/

In my opinion there is no denying that all levels and especially high levels of sport are entirely driven by money.