Madness – Affiliate Marketing Programs

March Madness is back, and traditional TV ads for the tournament are already mostly sold out, per network execs. But influencer marketers who run student-athlete campaigns are just getting started.

Unlike buying spots on CBS Sports, ads tied to a player’s name, image, and likeness — called NIL — can be spun up at a moment’s notice (pending university approvals) at a much lower cost. Performance is also straightforward to measure, as NIL campaigns typically live on Instagram or TikTok, where “likes” and views can help benchmark engagement.

TV ads are still king when it comes to scale and driving brand awareness, but running student-athlete campaigns can help brands test messaging with lower stakes and reach new audiences.

Companies like Keurig, NerdWallet, and Goldman Sachs are already hiring players to hawk products or raise brand awareness during the tournament. And as more games kick off, we should see a bump in student-athlete marketing activity from previous years, marketers and NIL experts told Business Insider.

“There’s a significant uptick in interest in March Madness sponsorships and influencer-marketing campaigns this year as compared to years past,” Ayden Syal, the CEO of the NIL marketing platform MOGL, told BI. “I think it’s just more of a function, more than anything else, of the industry expanding and brands recognizing how much value these micro and nano influencers provide.”

Kim DeCarolis, a VP who works with brands at the NIL consulting firm Altius Sports Partners, said she’d also seen a jump in planned brand activations this year compared to past tournaments.

“The market is in a much more mature, prepared place than it has been the previous two March Madnesses,'” said Sam Weber, head of brand marketing and communications at the NIL platform Opendorse.

“Some of the biggest brands in the world are now looking at March Madness and having it be part of their marketing calendar,” he said. “We’ve been working with a handful of blue-chip brands for the last quarter, if not more, preparing their NIL campaign so that once Selection Sunday is done, they’re ready to hit the ground running.”

Women’s basketball stars are a huge focus this year

One area of particular focus for marketers in 2024 is the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, where hype around the University of Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and other star players is driving up ticket sales.

“No offense to men at all, but I think brands are gearing towards women a little bit more,” said Staley Gibson, an account manager at the athlete-marketing platform OpenSponsorship. “They’re creating the content that our brands love and are looking for.”

Advertising and marketing tech firm Epsilon launched its first NIL campaign this year, offering $500 to any women’s Division-1 basketball player in the tournament who creates a promotional post for the brand on Instagram. It’s asking participants to highlight instances of teamwork and collaboration in their posts while including Epsilon’s hashtag and the company’s “Work Together to Win Together” branding. The company, which worked with NIL firm Opendorse on its first foray into student-athlete marketing, said it also plans to offer career planning and mentorship to players.

Adapting to swings in the tournament can help brands grab attention

While some companies like Epsilon planned their March Madness campaigns ahead of the first tip-off, others are likely to jump into NIL deals mid-tournament as they react to what’s happening on the courts.

Student-athlete marketing is more flexible than traditional advertising. A company can hire players to post on Instagram at the moment when they think they’ll get maximum impact. Buffalo Wild Wings deployed that strategy in 2022 when the brand enlisted Saint Peter’s University’s guard Doug Edert to promote its wings on social media during his team’s Cinderella run.

MOGL’s Syal said the majority of the campaigns running through his company’s platform are structured on a week-by-week basis so brands can hire players from teams that are still relevant.

“It basically becomes a reevaluation of who’s still available because the brands want to really capitalize on the fact that these teams are still in the limelight,” he said.

Of course, actually tracking down basketball players to hire during the tournament can be tough.

“Brands can have those conversations during the tournament, but even then, it’s so hard because these players are, at that point, focusing so much on their game,” OpenSponsorship’s Gibson said. “The players themselves, on top of their coaches and teams, really want them to be focused.”

One potential solution to this challenge is hiring student-athletes in other sports who can hype up the tournament without eating into practice time.

The sock brand Thorlo, which is working with MOGL on its NIL strategy, plans to hire NCAA cheerleaders to do March Madness promotions during the tournament, for example.

“These brands recognize that all of the participating teams are going to experience inherently a massive uptick in brand awareness,” Syal said. “They’re actually getting other student-athletes across the entire student-athlete body to promote products.”