Variety: CBS, Warner Sports Chiefs Sound Cautious Note on March Madness Expansion

Story from Variety:

Sometimes, more of a good thing may not be great.

With just days to go before the start of the NCAA’s annual — and popular and lucrative — March Madness men’s basketball tournament, the top executives of Paramount Global’s CBS Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports sounded skeptical about the potential to extend the field for more teams to participate in future editions.

“No one wants to do anything that’s going to negatively impact the tournament, and that’s where the focus is,” said David Berson, president and CEO of CBS Sports, in remarks made to reporters Tuesday.He noted that the tournament is a prized property and noted that “no one wants to do anything that is going to take away from how special” the event is.

And yet, he acknowledged there have been conversations between the media companies and the NCAA about whether such moves would be in the best interests of the fans, the sport and the games. CBS and TNT, TBS and TruTV have shared custody of the NCAA March Madness tournament since 2011. The companies will continue to share rights to the property through 2032 in a deal valued at $8.8 billion that was set in 2016.

In an interview with CBS Sports in late February, Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, cautioned that while committees were studying the prospect of expanding the event, “this is definitely not a fait accompli. The recommendation to not expand the tournaments is absolutely a potential outcome here in the short-term.”

And yet, if there were a moment when expansion might make sense, it would be now. Sports are seen as one of the few properties that can continue to win the broad simultaneous audiences that advertisers and distributors continue to crave in the streaming era. As more one-time TV viewers convert to use of streaming services, they are increasingly watching programs at moments of their own choosing, making a big crowd harder to snare — and the economics of the media business more difficult to maintain.

Still, there is concern that a longer tournament might not generate the engagement executives would like. Adding more teams might mean starting March Madness earlier than has come to be the norm. That would require additional shifts in programming schedules, production crews and on-air sports teams — and some sort of guarantee that advertisers believed earlier rounds of play were worth supporting.

“If it’s something that makes sense for the fans and the tournament,” said Luis Silberwasser, CEO of TNT Sports, “we’ll be supportive.”