Measuring March Madness, silver screen ad attention and more: Datacenter Weekly

March Madness TV by the numbers

Inscape, the data subsidiary of smart TV maker Vizio, is out with fresh data surrounding basketball as March Madness ramps up:

• From Jan. 1 through March 13, basketball—men’s and women’s college ball and the NBA—accounted for nearly 3.5% of all time spent watching TV. Over the same period, 2% of all TV watch time went to men’s college basketball.

• Watch for those numbers to rise as March Madness gets … madder: From March 15 through April 4, 2022, the men’s tournament was the No. 1 thing on TV, accounting for 5.32% of all TV watch time. (By comparison, the women’s tournament accounted for 0.63%.)

Essential context: Vizio is itself betting big on March Madness this year. Today it’s launching its own college-ball-themed show, “3 Pointers,” a branded entertainment miniseries starring Casey Webb (of Travel Channel’s “Man vs. Food”) and produced in partnership with sportsbook BetMGM. The show is, of course, getting heavy promotion on Vizio’s home screen.

See also: Women’s March Madness ad inventory sells out