NCAA March Madness is here, and this year the fervor surrounding the months-long tournament has expanded beyond traditional TV coverage to YouTube.
We used our v3 software to analyze audience views and engagement around March Madness this year on YouTube. So far, video content around the college basketball tournament series has attracted over 22 million views. Over one thousand March Madness-related YouTube videos have been posted since the start of the tournament.
The official March Madness YouTube channel has received a total of 4.4 million views in the two months it has been live, and 9,208 subscribers.
In comparison, the official NFL YouTube channel accumulated 18.8 million views after its first two months live — 4x as many views as March Madness. This performance difference may be due in part to the fact that the NFL is a professional league, while March Madness covers college basketball.
Brands who sponsored 2015 March Madness have seen varying degrees of view growth on YouTube as a direct result of the sponsorship. Capital One leads with 28% increased view growth on its YouTube channel from February to March 2015. Buffalo Wild Wings experienced an increase of 21% in view growth. AT&T‘s sponsorship has been less successful, with a less than one percent increase in view growth month-over-month.
