Although March Madness runs are rarely profitable from a monetary standpoint, there usually is no replacement for the amount of exposure a mid-major program can receive in the most important basketball month of the year.
For the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, that figure is $23 million. People talking about "Chattanooga" on social media. People rocking the Power C logo that represents the university.
When David Jean-Baptiste's shot splashed through the net, giving the Mocs a 64-63 win over Furman in the Southern Conference championship game on March 7 in a game televised on ESPN2, Twitter blew up. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes fired off a seven-word tweet that said "Chattanooga at the buzzer!!!!!!!! Can't beat #MarchMadness". But if there was no financial benefit to the tweet, the university partnered with MVP Index for an analysis to see the value of that 10-day span, which started with the Jean-Baptiste shot and ended with a near-upset of Illinois in the NCAA tournament first round.
The Mocs, according to the report, generated over $23 million in exposure value for the brand, with nearly all of that coming from broadcast exposure, with the shot essentially being played in a continuous loop on all major TV networks. In addition, Jean-Baptiste and former head coach Lamont Paris made an appearance on CBS's "Inside College Basketball" and the live selection show coverage also had a camera on the team.
The Mahomes tweet alone drew over 500,000 impressions with a value of nearly $12,000.
The Mocs' NCAA tournament game against Illinois drew the second-largest audience in the Friday (March 18) night slot with 2.9 million people tuning in, only trailing Duke's first round game. It was the second-most watched game on TNT that day, behind only Alabama-Notre Dame.
In the social analysis provided by MVP, over $576,000 was generated between owned and earned social media content related to the program during the postseason run. Six ESPN tweets were valued at over $252,000, accounting for 89% of the value.
Any tweet pertaining to Jean-Baptiste's shot accounted for over $344,000 in value.
"Obviously, we could never afford to buy this kind of exposure," UTC vice chancellor and athletic director Mark Wharton said in a statement. "I think this shows the impact a strong athletics program can have on raising the visibility of a university. It is also important that the student-athletes, coaches and staff represent the institution the right way. That is what makes me the most proud about what our men's basketball team did this year. Like all of our programs, they affected the overall brand of UTC in a positive way."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.