The NCAA men’s basketball tournament began with 68 teams on March 19, featured games in 14 cities and is now down to the Final Four. As those teams battle it out for the national title at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis from April 6-8, it’s worth keeping in mind these 25 numbers that add context to the festivities (courtesy of the NCAA, USA Today, Associated Press, CBSSports.com, Sports Minneapolis, WalletHub and Statista).
- 35: Number of programs that have won a national title since 1939
- 20: Number of national titles won by North Carolina, the most of any team
- 100 million: Number of television viewers March Madness collectively is expected to attract this year
- 180: Number of countries from which those viewers hail
- 94,000: Number of basketball fans expected to visit Minneapolis for the Final Four
- 9,000: Number of hotel rooms available in downtown Minneapolis
- 2,000: Number of volunteers expected to work some aspect of the Final Four
- 3: Number of times Minneapolis has hosted the Final Four (including this year)
- 284: Rank, out of 289, of Minneapolis in WalletHub’s ranking of “best cities for college hoops fans”
- 142 million: Projected economic impact, in dollars, of the Final Four on the City of Minneapolis
- 8.98 million: 2019 salary, in dollars, of Duke University’s Mike Krzyzewski, college basketball’s highest-paid head coach
- 2.1 million: Annual salary, in dollars, through 2023 of NCAA President Mark Emmert
- 216 million: Amount, in dollars, the NCAA distributed to 32 Division I conferences in 2018 based on which teams made it to the tournament and how far they advanced
- $340.4 million: Amount, in dollars, paid to the Big Ten Conference between 1997 and 2018, the most of any in college basketball
- $25.3 million: Amount, in dollars, received by the Southwestern Athletic Conference between 1997 and 2018, the lowest of all conferences
- 19.6 billion: Amount, in dollars, paid by CBS/Turner Broadcasting for rights to televise the tournament from 2011 to 2032
- 1.7 million: Record price, in dollars, of a 30-second TV commercial aired during the 2018 national championship game
- $5.24 million: Average price, in dollars, of a 30-second TV commercial aired during Super Bowl LIII in February
- 160 to 360: Range of face-value prices, in dollars, of a single all-sessions pass to the 2019 Final Four
- 68,257: Attendance at the 2018 national semifinals at San Antonio’s Alamodome
- 67,831: Attendance at the 2018 National Championship Game
- 2,206: Number of media credentials issued for the 2018 Final Four, a record
- 2008: The only year all No. 1 seeds advanced to the Final Four
- 1: Number of perfect brackets in the Capital One NCAA March Madness Bracket Challenge through the first 48 games — apparently the longest perfect streak ever
- 9,223,372,036,854,775,808: The number of different possible bracket combinations; that number is pronounced like this: Nine quintillion, two hundred twenty-three quadrillion, three hundred seventy-two trillion, thirty-six billion, eight hundred fifty-four million, seven hundred seventy-five thousand, eight hundred eight
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