The NCAA Tournament Expansion Debate: It All Boils Down to Dollars and (Viewer) Sense
The potential expansion of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is a perennial topic, but behind the passionate arguments about bubble teams and diluted competition, lies a cold, hard truth: it’s a financial equation. While whispers of expanding from the current 68 teams to 72 or even 76 have grown louder, fueled by the ambitions of power conference commissioners, particularly those from the SEC and Big Ten, the reality is far from a done deal. NCAA senior vice president of basketball, Dan Gavitt, has publicly acknowledged the uncertainty, emphasizing that the decision hinges on a critical factor: profitability.
The core question is simple: can expansion generate enough revenue to justify the added costs? Adding teams means adding games, and adding games means added expenses, from travel and lodging to facility rentals and staffing. Unless the NCAA can guarantee that these additional games won’t result in financial losses for schools and conferences, the expansion proposal becomes a non-starter.
Consider a hypothetical expansion to 76 teams. This translates to four additional games, most likely slotted into the Tuesday and Wednesday before the official tournament tip-off on Thursday. Currently, these days feature two play-in games, broadcast on TruTV. Expansion would essentially double the number of games on those days, but the success of this expansion hinges on a single, pivotal question: how much are those extra games worth to the television networks that broadcast March Madness?
According to the NCAA, last year’s play-in games attracted a respectable 6.2 million viewers. While decent, this figure pales in comparison to the 8.53 million average viewers who tune in for the first-round games on Thursday and Friday. This discrepancy highlights a crucial issue: the general public still perceives Thursday as the true beginning of the tournament. These are the casual fans, the ones who fill out office brackets and drive the astronomical ratings that define March Madness.
The challenge for CBS and Turner, the networks that broadcast the tournament, is to determine if they can change viewer behavior and draw a significant audience to the Tuesday and Wednesday games. Will fans embrace the expanded schedule, or will they continue to view those games as mere preambles to the "real" tournament? In a way, the expansion is a test of the NCAA Tournament’s status as a cultural institution. The Thursday start is deeply ingrained in American sports culture, bordering on an unofficial national holiday. Disrupting that tradition might prove difficult.
Of course, the networks could attempt to attract viewers by scheduling compelling matchups with recognizable programs on Tuesday and Wednesday. However, this could also lead to "March Madness fatigue". With six consecutive days of college basketball programming, there is a question of whether the audience will be there to support the massive investment CBS and Turner would have to make for those extra games.
And it’s not just about the broadcast rights. Every team that qualifies for the NCAA Tournament earns a "unit" of revenue for its conference, with subsequent units awarded for each round advanced. These units are currently valued at approximately $2 million each. Adding eight teams to the field would instantly require generating an additional $16 million just to cover the initial unit payouts, not including the millions in additional costs associated with hosting more games and accommodating more teams.
If expansion doesn’t add to the overall revenue pie, it effectively shrinks the slices for everyone else. It’s hard to imagine widespread support for an expansion plan that reduces the average value of a unit, particularly when major conference athletic departments are already grappling with financial pressures, including the multi-million dollar financial blows that come with athlete NIL deals.
Ultimately, the decision on expansion comes down to a single question: what are CBS and Turner willing to pay for those extra games? This simple question overshadows all the other conventional arguments against expanding the tournament field. Arguments about diluting the talent pool, rewarding mediocrity, or further complicating office bracket pools become secondary considerations.
While past proposals for a massive expansion to 96 teams are now largely considered unviable due to unfavorable financial projections, a more modest expansion to 72 or 76 teams remains a possibility, contingent on the networks’ willingness to invest.
NCAA senior vice president Dan Gavitt has publicly acknowledged that the committees are giving expansion "more consideration than at any time" in recent years. He emphasized that the decision is not predetermined, and that one possible outcome is no expansion at all. If expansion is recommended, it would likely be modest in scope.
The push for expansion initially gained momentum in 2022 when the SEC received a lower than expected number of tournament bids. This prompted SEC commissioner Greg Sankey to question the automatic qualifiers awarded to smaller conferences, arguing that they were taking away opportunities from teams in larger, more competitive conferences.
However, this season’s projections suggest that the SEC and Big Ten are on track to receive a significant number of bids, potentially accounting for over 20 teams combined. This would diminish the immediate need to artificially create more spots for those conferences.
Ultimately, any decision regarding tournament expansion must be carefully considered. Adding eight teams could alter the tournament’s dynamics. To ensure the success of the Tuesday and Wednesday games, the matchups must be appealing to viewers. Filling these slots with low-profile teams playing for a chance to be a 16 seed would likely fail to generate substantial interest.
Conversely, featuring struggling name-brand programs battling for a 13 seed might not significantly move the needle. A hypothetical game between struggling programs that would only be in the tournament because of expansion, such as Texas and Villanova, might not justify the investment.
The key decision-makers at CBS and Turner are actively evaluating these factors. Their assessment of the potential revenue generated by expansion will ultimately determine the fate of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament’s future. The math must work, the numbers must add up, and the viewers must tune in. Only then will the NCAA Tournament expand beyond its current format.
