NCAA Economics: Which Teams Generate the Most Value?

March Madness isn’t just brackets and buzzer-beaters; it’s a massive money machine. A small group of powerhouse programs drives a big share of it. A new report by Doc’s Sports analyzed how each NCAA team contributes to the overall economic value of March Madness.

Key Takeaways

The 2025 value pool totals $597.4 million: $550.0M from media rights, $31.0M from betting activity (1% of handle), and $16.4M from a host-city case study
In 2025, the top 8 teams capture 12.9% of total attention; the top 16 capture 20.9%
From 2002–2025, the programs generating the most cumulative value: Duke, Kansas, Gonzaga, Kentucky, and North Carolina

How We Measure Team Attention Share

For each season, we take every team's Pre-Tournament AdjEM (efficiency margin), standardize it across all Division I teams, then apply a softmax transform. This gives each team a weight that sums to 1 across the entire nation. Higher AdjEM = higher expected attention share = larger slice of the money pools.

The Three Money Pools

Media Rights ($550.0M)

CBS and Turner Networks signed a deal with the NCAA to broadcast March Madness games. The total deal is worth $8.8 billion and runs from 2017 through 2032, representing 16 years of tournament coverage. To understand how much money is available in a single year, we divide $8.8 billion by 16 years, which gives us approximately $550 million per season.

It's important to note that the NCAA doesn't actually hand out $550 million in one year to schools. The money is paid over the entire contract period, but thinking about it as $550 million per year helps us compare it fairly to other money sources like betting.

Sports Betting ($31.0M)

During March Madness, people place a lot of bets. The American Gaming Association estimates that in 2025, about $3.1 billion in legal bets were placed on March Madness games.

Now, the $3.1 billion is the total amount of money wagered, not money earned by sportsbooks or the NCAA. For this study, we take 1% of that $3.1 billion ($31 million) and call it "captured economic value." This is a conservative estimate—we're not saying the NCAA actually gets this money, just that it represents value generated by the tournament. The actual percentage could be higher or lower depending on how you define "value."

Host City Impact ($16.4M)

When the tournament comes to a city, it brings visitors who spend money on hotels, restaurants, gas, and shopping. These cities see a big economic boost during those few days.

Raleigh, North Carolina hosted first and second round games in 2025. Local tourism officials reported that the tournament brought about $16.4 million in direct spending to the city. This money came from visiting fans, teams, media, and vendors.

We use Raleigh as a single example, but every host city experiences a different economic impact—some cities are larger and attract more visitors, while others are smaller. If we added up the spending from all the host cities that hold tournament games each year, the total would be much higher than $16.4 million. For this study, we're using Raleigh to show what's possible, but the actual total economic impact from all host cities combined is likely significantly larger.

2025's Top 10 Value Generators

We calculate 2025’s Top 10 Value Generators in three steps. First, we use each team’s pre-tournament AdjEM (How strong the team was before March Madness, based on its adjusted efficiency margin (higher = stronger)) to compute its attention share, so that all Division I teams’ shares add up to 100%. Next, we apply those attention shares to the total 2025 March Madness value pool of $597.4 million (media rights, sports betting, and host-city impact combined). Finally, we rank teams by their resulting attributed value; the Top 10 are simply the teams that receive the largest dollar allocations under these assumptions.

2025's Bottom 10 Value Generators

These teams receive the smallest allocations because the model assigns them minimal attention based on pre-tournament strength. These figures reflect attenuated attention, not actual revenue—low-major programs earn most money through shared conference distributions.

Long-Run Leaders (2002–2025)

This table highlights the programs that have generated the most modeled March Madness value over the last 24 seasons. For each team, we add up its attention share and attributed dollars from 2002 through 2025, then list how many seasons it appears in our dataset. The result is a long-term leaderboard showing which brands—like Duke, Kansas, and Gonzaga—have consistently commanded the largest share of the tournament’s economic spotlight.

Data by Team

Methodology

This study estimates how much March Madness economic value can be attributed to each team, not how much cash they actually receive. Here’s how we build the numbers:

Define the money pools (one season)

TV/media: Start from the $8.8 billion CBS/Turner March Madness rights deal through 2032 and treat it as $550.0M per season (simple annualization).
Sports betting: Use the $3.1B estimate of legal March Madness handle for 2025 and take 1% of that ($31.0M) as an illustrative “captured value” slice.
Host city: Use Raleigh’s reported $16.4M in direct impact from hosting 2025 first- and second-round games as a single-site example.

Measure team strength and attention

Use pre-tournament Adjusted Efficiency Margin (AdjEM) as the core team input, since it reflects how strong each team is before March based on offense, defense, and strength of schedule.

For each season (2002–2025), take every Division I team’s AdjEM and:

Standardize it within that season so we focus on who is strong relative to that year’s field.
Feed the standardized values into a softmax function to create an attention share for each team.
The result: every team has a positive attention share, and all shares in a season add up to 100%.

Turn attention into dollars

For each season and each money pool, compute:

Media value: attention_share × $550.0M
Betting value: attention_share × $31.0M
Host value: attention_share × $16.4M

Add those pieces:

Total attributed value = media + betting + host

By design, if you add up all teams’ amounts in a season, you get back exactly $550.0M, $31.0M, and $16.4M for the three pools, and $597.4M in total.

Build rankings and long-run leaders

Within a single year (for example, 2025), rank teams by their total attributed value to get the “Top 10” and “Bottom 10” value generators.
Across years (2002–2025), sum a program’s attributed values over all seasons it appears to get cumulative attention and cumulative dollars.
These long-run totals show which brands generate the most modeled March Madness value over time.

How to interpret the outputs

The dollar figures are modeled economic exposure based on expected attention, not audited revenue, profit, or actual payouts.
The framework is meant to be transparent and flexible: you can change pool sizes (e.g., a different betting capture rate) or how sharply attention is concentrated, and the allocation math still works the same way.

Limitations

This is an allocation model, not audited revenue. Teams don't actually receive these exact amounts.
Media rights are annualized, not actual single-season payouts.
Betting dollars depend on our 1% capture assumption and can be adjusted.
Host city impact uses Raleigh as a single-site proxy. Scaling to all host cities would increase the pool significantly.
The model currently uses only pre-tournament strength. Adding actual tournament advancement, games played, and TV ratings would improve accuracy by shifting attention from expected to realized exposure.

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