Every March, it renews itself, and it’s not springtime. Instead, it’s the craziness of March Madness College Basketball.
If you think it’s not a big deal, then you don’t understand the value of sports in America.
Sports are one of the great pastimes in American culture (and elsewhere).
You can see it in the level of passion and energy that people display in supporting their teams, whether it’s in-person or watching on TV, or in a bar. Fans are everywhere when it comes to sports.
Did you know the term “fan” is short for fanatic, which is defined as a person who has “…extreme unreasoning or enthusiasm for a cause,” while a fan is described as a person who “is an ardent devotee, an enthusiast.”
So whether a person is a fan or a fanatic is simply the level of clearheadedness in their devotion to a player or team.
And the difference between understanding sports, the reality of a team’s potential, and blinding loyalty are what it takes to make good decisions in choosing who may win a game or not.
Take March Madness as an example. March Madness is one of the year’s most popular events in the United States, with an estimated 70 million brackets filled out and played.
Photo: —There are office pools, brackets found online, and even pools with family members that may have attended other schools. It’s so popular that even people that are not sports fans participate and look forward to playing every year.
Proof of the immense popularity is that employers report an uptick in the number of sick days used, extended lunch breaks, and rescheduling appointments during the two weeks of March Madness.
The average fan’s enthusiasm stops with their office or friendly pool.s Others like to wager a little more at the sportsbook, and to be successful, you need a little luck and to understand the March Madness lines for each team.
These lines are similar to NBA betting lines, and you can find plenty of resources to explain them to you.
But it doesn’t take a genius or expert to do well with office pools.
Office pools are more about enjoying the camaraderie of competing against others in your pool, enjoying the trash-talking that a newbie has more wins by choosing mascots over the strength of a team than an experienced player made by selecting their picks based on the overall season.
The best part of March Madness pools is that as amateurs, college basketball players can win and lose almost by emotional effort as much as tactics.
Only the Super Bowl beats March Madness as far as the participation of casual fans.
Still, with the Super Bowl, the event and half-time show have much more to do regarding the interaction and enjoyment of the game.
Why do people watch the tournament when they maybe didn’t pay attention to College Basketball the entire year?
It’s because of March Madness office pools.
The attraction is so strong and the interest so great that advertisers primarily target males ages 18-45, spending almost $1 Billion in various marketing campaigns. Compare that amount to the $545 million spent on the Super Bowl in 2022, and you can see the level of interest in March Madness.
While much of the advertising dollars used to come from beer and snack food companies, in 2022, the majority of advertising dollars spent came from entertainment and media companies, with automotive and tech companies coming in the next two positions.
The amount spent on sports advertising rose to over $6.8 billion in 2022, with an eye toward even more spending in 2023.
For the vast majority of the world, March Madness may seem like a catchy little phrase. But delve a little deeper, and you start to see it’s a wholly American tradition, one as pervasive as apple pie and Mcdonald’s.
Between the amount of money spent on advertising, the lost labor, and productivity to the sheer volume of casual players in various office and friendly pools, March Madness has a hook into the American psyche, unlike any other two-week event.
From Mom and Pop selecting schools based on where their kids attended to secretaries and receptionists choosing teams based on a color or mascot to the more ardent fan and fanatic, March Madness is the sporting event that reigns supreme.
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