March Madness is the premier sporting tournament in basketball. The three-week-long showcase of college hoops nets billions of dollars every year, through sponsorships, TV revenue, partnerships, and advertisements. One would expect that college ball’s top names like Cooper Flagg and Ase Bailey would get a healthy cut of this right? Nada.
Advertisement
Andrew Petcash recently made a thread on X about how basketball’s biggest annual event rakes in astronomical profits, and how they manage to pay none in taxes or to the athletes as a cut. The thread covers MM’s massive impact, not only on the overall economy but also on the local economies of every city that is lucky enough to host a game.
Since the NCAA is technically a non-profit, it pays no taxes, and all of the nearly $1 billion it makes annually gets used up in marketing its players and teams. Petcash revealed how the players are not included when it comes to the payouts, and how the marketing execs and higher-ups take home hefty sums of money.
Duke superstar Cooper Flagg, who’s projected to be the No. 1 pick in the 2025 draft, has an NIL valuation of $4.8 million. He puts people in seats, and his economic impact in his sole season at Duke has been massive. However, he stands to make a goose egg by the time March Madness ends, because the NCAA doesn’t pay players.
To make matters worse, every studio that has the right to stream March Madness has multi-billion dollar contracts in place with the NIL. In 2011, CBS and Turner Studios entered into a $10.8 billion, 14-year deal with the NCAA, giving the company exclusive rights over March Madness.
The additional boost in money comes from their advertising costs, as companies pay heavy money to be shown on TV between basketball games. Just last year, the NCAA netted $1 billion from advertisers, with a 30-second clip costing nearly $400k during the round of 64 games. The Final Four games are even more pricey to advertise in, with the average cost being a whopping $2.3 million.
Petcash ends his thread with a mind-blowing fact- if the NCAA paid even 1% of their annual earnings to every single player involved in the tourney (884 of them), these athletes would pocket a healthy $10 thousand.
The fact that they could ideally distribute nearly $900 thousand among the players and still walk away with almost a billion dollars in profits is something that Petcash feels should motivate the Association to compensate the players involved.
8) Players should be paid
If the NCAA paid 1% of March Madness profits to the 884 players involved…
Each athlete would receive $10,000
March Madness = Big Business pic.twitter.com/ImQioKmoRu
— Andrew Petcash (@AndrewPetcash) March 20, 2025
Flagg and Bailey are bonafide superstars. They draw eyes to the team, and the competition, and have an undeniable impact. They put their body on the line every time they step onto the court, and the fact that they walk away with absolutely no money during the biggest celebration of the sport hasn’t sat well with a lot of fans.
In their eyes, if the players are the ones bringing in the money, surely they can be fairly compensated for it right?
For players like Flagg and Bailey, who are almost a guaranteed NBA contract, this money may not feel like much. But not every player in college ball makes it to the NBA. For them, a $10k cheque can mean a lot.
