More Teams, More Revenue, and More Questions Surround NCAA Tournament Expansion

March Madness has turned into May Madness with the announcement that the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will expand from 68 to 76 teams beginning with the 2026-2027 season. The decision, made public on Thursday, further dilutes the romantic notion that the annual showcase is still about school pride, buzzer-beaters and Cinderella upsets. It’s now a full-scale commercial enterprise.According to various reports, the expansion will generate roughly $300 million in additional advertising revenue through 2032, tied largely to beer, wine, spirits and hard seltzers, brands previously prohibited from sponsorship deals. It also opens the doors for Power 4 conference schools to enrich their coffers, leaving more mid-majors hoping for inclusion in the Big Dance.Not everyone views the move as positive. “It’s strictly a money grab for the Power Four conferences to get teams that finished 6-10 in their conference into the tournament,” said the long-time head coach of the UConn women’s team, Geno Auriemma, to the Associated Press. Mark Few, coach of Gonzaga University’s men’s team, said, “It’s the dumbing down of the regular season, which is sad. We’re out here trying to generate interest in the regular season and expansion doesn’t help. That’s where we’ve been struggling. The tournament is great as is.”Dan Hurly, head coach of UConn’s men’s teams, initially blasted the expansion of the tournament, saying, “I loved the exclusivity of it. I loved the fact it was a hard tournament to qualify for.”Under the largest expansion to the men’s tournament since 1985 when the field doubled from 32 to 64 teams, the “First Four” will be scrapped and replaced by the “Opening Round,” featuring 12 games spread over two days. On the men’s side, that means six games Tuesday and six Wednesday before the traditional Thursday first-round begins. Half of those games will take place in Dayton, Ohio, the traditional site of the “First Four,” and the other half at a second site yet to be determined.The women’s tournament, which expanded from 64 to 68 teams in 2022, will have 12 “Opening Round” games played Wednesday and Thursday on campus sites with the Round of 64 starting on Friday.A release by the NCAA officials said the move will allow more schools to benefit from participating in the tournament. Roughly 21 percent of Division 1 programs will now qualify for the men’s and women’s tournaments, up from 18 percent — until now the lowest participation rate among major team sports.Others see it as purely a business decision. The expansion means more games and more opportunities for sponsorship and advertising deals that are projected to generate an additional $50 million annually in media rights revenue, according to the Sports Business Journal. The NCAA recently agreed to allow expanded sponsorship opportunities, involving beer, wine, spirits and hard seltzers, creating fresh revenue pipelines for participating schools and broadcast partners.Aligning with liquor companies became inevitable with schools scrambling to fund athlete compensation in the era of NIL deals, transfer portal retention and revenue-sharing. Every dollar and every bid matters.Teams that qualified for the field of 68 last year made roughly $2.1 million for each tournament victory. That figure will expand as well. The NCAA said participating schools will receive more than $131 million in new revenue over the remaining six years of its current broadcast agreements.Of the 68 teams in last year’s tournaments, 31 were automatic qualifiers and 37 received at-large bids. Expansion to 76 teams increases the number of at-large spots to 44, while automatic bids rise to 32 with the return of the Pac-12 Conference.Just how much mid-major schools, the so-called Cinderella entries, will benefit remains uncertain. Mid-major teams that won their regular-season conference titles are normally left out of the national tournament if they don’t win their conference tournaments. The commissioner of the Big Sky Conference, Tom Wistrcill, hopes that will change with expansion. “A dominant team during the regular season that doesn’t win the conference tournament is more likely to find a pathway in March,” he said in the AP report.Skeptics suggest expansion provides an entry path for middle-of-the-pack teams from the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC, in essence helping the rich get richer.“It’s a rigged system,” Mr. Auriemma said. “A system intended to benefit schools that supposedly play in leagues so difficult that below .500 teams deserve bids.”Creighton coach Alan Huss, who took 12th-seed High Point to a surprise first-round win over No. 5 seed Wisconsin in last year’s tournament, said, “I think that it’s difficult for mid-majors to get an at-large bid now. I don’t know if it’s going to change substantially by adding additional spots. It’s great for everyone to have an opportunity.”Meanwhile, the romantic idea of Cinderella teams making an impact in the tournament is already becoming more fantasy than fact. No team seeded lower than No. 12 advanced to the second round of the men’s tournament in 2025, and just one double-digit seed reached the Sweet 16 this year.John Calipari, who made his name at UMass and won a national title at Kentucky, offered a unique perspective. “As someone who has been both David, and won some, and Goliath, and lost some, that’s what makes this tournament special,” he told CBS Sports. “We can’t afford to lose that special piece of our sport.”

More Teams, More Revenue, and More Questions Surround NCAA Tournament Expansion

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