The March Madness, which we all love, is returning after two years of hard, panic-disrupted times.

The 2022 men’s NCAA TournamentOn Thursday, CBS Sports and Turner Sports will air the first episode. DisneyThe broadcasts will be carried by ESPN and ABC properties women’s NCAA tournamentStart Friday

For Executives Paramount GlobalWarnerMedia and March Madness were represented by WarnerMedia on Tuesday. The men’s side promises nearly $1B in advertising revenues.

“The country is prepared for the [NCAA] tournament,” said CBS Sports President Sean McManus.

Lenny Daniels from Turner Sports said, “We’re returning to being normal.” We want to go one step beyond that.”

These networks lost the 2020 NCAA tournament due to Covid. The 2021 event was held in a bubble& witnessed the Baylor Bears winning their first NCAA men’s basketball title.

But this year’s tournament will include the return of storied programs Duke and Kentucky – both missed last year’s tournament – and legendary coach Mike Krzyzewski chasing his final title with the Blue Devils.

In 2021, the NCAA championship match between unbeaten Gonzaga and Baylor attracted an average of 16.9 million viewersCBS Sports saw a decline of 14% from the 2019 event. The championship was also the most watched on CBS Sports since 1982, when the network began broadcasting them.

On average, 14.9 million people watched the 2021 Final Four men’s games.

Turner Sports is hosting the NCAA men’s tournament for the first-time since 2018 when Villanova beat Michigan. This title game attracted around 16.5 millions viewers.

Since 2016, the Final Four has been rotated by Turner and CBS. Since 2016, Turner and CBS have rotated the Final Four. The NCAA men’s championship match was last seen at 20 million viewers in 2017, when Gonzaga played University of North Carolina. The game attracted 22 million viewers.

McManus said Tuesday that he couldn’t forecast viewership for the 2022 tournament, but added, “good games and good storylines” to his call.

Additionally, he noted that more well-known programs should return to the tournament in order to increase viewership. Nielsen is also a measurement firm. out-of-homeViewership is the last metrics. The final metrics are used to count out-of-home TVs at places such as airports, sports bars and restaurants. Nielsen used to provide only at-home data for linear TV reports.

McManus claimed that Nielsen’s decision of combining the metrics is good for the network as well as for its sponsors. It truly provides an accurate count for how many people are viewing our content.

Disney wants to be the winner of this year’s women’s championship game between Stanford and Arizona. It attracted 4 million viewers on average and became the most watched women’s contest in history.

In 2021, women’s semi-final games featured South Carolina and Stanford. Arizona lost to Arizona by an average of 1.5 million viewers. The University of Connecticut loss to Arizona attracted 2.6 millions viewers. That’s 24% higher than in the second semifinal match of 2019. The average viewers for the Sweet 16 games on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 was 918,000, an increase of 67% over 2019.

Television ad measurement firm iSpotEstimates of ad spend for the 2021 men’s basketball tournament were about $1.05 trillion, an increase of 21.4% over the tournament in 2019. CNBC reported that the company said this. AT&TAt $74.7 Million, he was the highest spender for ads about the 2021 tournament. Capital OneAdverts for Geico (46.7 million), Buick (39.5 million) or Progressive (37.7 millions) were spent at $48.7million

Bogusz did not reveal details but said the projected amount is “in the range” when Bogusz was told about the estimates.

Jon Diament is Turner Sports’ chief revenue officers. He spoke of the high adspend. Diament noted the amount of time the networks have to air the games – “three weeks of activity … it’s quite outstanding that we can gobble that money up in just a three-week flight.”

The NCAA announced last September that the March Madness brand would include the 2022 NCAA women’s tournament. It was announced after growing pressure and criticismOver the original position of the organisation on the use of the trademark only for men’s tournament.

EPSN said It also sold all of its inventory for women’s tournament. There are 22 advertisers in total AppleGeneral Motors TargetT-Mobile will display ads during the games.

Advertisers continue to be a major buyer in the sports programming advertising marketplace. Super Bowl is still the most valuable inventory. CNBC’s parent company NBCUniversal paid approximately $6.5 million to Super Bowl 56 ads, while some brands paid a record $7 million for a 30-second ad.

Companies don’t seem to be discouraged by high-end sports programming. Bogusz explained that advertisers from every demo group are spending additional money to acquire inventory.

McManus said, “It offers the best drama all television has to offer, and it is still one of the most desirable programming that advertisers can afford,” And that includes the NCAA Tournament.

Bogusz was asked if the NCAA men’s tournament will increase in value to $3,000,000 per 30 second when CBS return to the event 2023. Bogusz replied: “I wouldn’t say it would. However, we expect pricing to rise as we go forward.

While networks are welcoming a return to normal for March Madness, there are contingency plans in place for updating the top news of the moment – Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

McManus stated that there are “more important things” happening around the globe than the NCAA Tournament. He said, “No one is going pretend that the action in the court is as significant as the life and death action taking place in Ukraine.”

McManus referred to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 as an example for how the network will approach coverage. McManus stated that the networks will update Ukraine’s war as necessary and handle it “the best way we can.”

Daniels added, “We have the two best production companies as well as two of our best news organisations,” and he was referring specifically to CBS News or CNN. I believe that we’ll take the right decision.