{"id":781404,"date":"2026-05-08T06:55:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:55:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/781404\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T06:55:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T06:55:14","slug":"march-madness-to-expand-to-76-teams-starting-next-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/781404\/","title":{"rendered":"March Madness to expand to 76 teams starting next season"},"content":{"rendered":"

The magical March Madness<\/a> cocktail will now include eight more teams, eight more games and more of one other ingredient, too: beer. Maybe wine, too.<\/p>\n

The NCAA on Thursday announced a long-expected expansion of its men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball tournaments to 76 teams each starting next season, explaining that it made the money part work by opening sponsorship opportunities to a long-restricted alcohol category.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say that expansion would not have happened without that agreement,\u201d said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA\u2019s senior vice president of basketball.<\/p>\n

The new, 76-team brackets will jam eight extra games \u2014 for a total of 12 involving 24 teams \u2014 into the front half of the first week of each tournament. It will turn what\u2019s now known as the First Four into a bigger affair that will now be called the March Madness Opening Round.<\/p>\n

The 12 winners will move into the main 64-team bracket that will begin, as usual, on Thursday for the men and Friday for the women. In all, there will now be 120 games across the two tournaments over seven days to set the table for the Sweet 16s.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings will look a little different, but feel very, very similar,\u201d said Amanda Braun, the women\u2019s tournament committee chair.<\/p>\n

Because the added games were unlikely to sell themselves, the first expansion of the men\u2019s tournament in 15 years \u2014 when it was bumped to 68 teams, followed by the women in 2022 \u2014 will be bankrolled by around $300 million in extra funding courtesy of new sponsorship opportunities for beer, wine, spirits and hard seltzer that includes more advertising space on CBS, TNT and other partners whose $8.8 billion deal runs through 2032. <\/p>\n

The NCAA said it will distribute more than $131 million of the new revenue to schools that make the tournament.<\/p>\n

A \u2018money grab\u2019 for big conferences and an opportunity for Cinderellas, as well<\/p>\n

The number of at-large selections will increase from 37 to 44, ESPN reported, most of which are expected to go to teams from the power conferences that were already commanding the lion\u2019s share of entries in the bracket. Two years ago, the Southeastern Conference placed a record 14 teams<\/a> in the men\u2019s bracket. Last season, the Big Ten had nine.<\/a><\/p>\n

In an interview earlier this week, UConn women\u2019s coach Geno Auriemma spelled out the bottom line.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is strictly a money grab for the Power Four conferences to get teams that finished 6-10 in their conference to get into the tournament,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

He also questioned the need to expand the women\u2019s bracket. Only seven of 32 round-of-64 games this year were decided by single digits compared to 11 for the men.<\/p>\n

The move is a sign of the times, which includes massive expansion \u2014 the Atlantic Coast Conference, for instance, has grown from nine to 17 teams since 1996 \u2014 and the reality that mid-major schools with talented players will often see them plucked away by programs with bigger budgets and the ability to pay them through revenue sharing. The rich get richer.<\/p>\n

Cinderella? There will still be room for those stirring runs in the tournaments, though not a single mid-major<\/a> advanced past the first weekend of either tournament the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs someone who has been both David, and won some, and Goliath, and lost some, that\u2019s what makes this tournament special,\u201d Arkansas coach John Calipari said earlier in the week. \u201cWe can\u2019t afford to lose that special piece of our sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is not a huge concern of the decision-makers anymore, who will point to TV ratings that traditionally spell out fans\u2019 preference for watching the likes of Duke and North Carolina over St. Peter\u2019s and San Diego State, especially once the Sweet 16 starts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe impact on everyone was considered,\u201d said Keith Gill, the men\u2019s tournament chairman. \u201cWe actually think it\u2019s, overall, going to be positive. And we think that\u2019s for folks at the autonomy level (Power Four) and folks that are non-autonomy.\u201d<\/p>\n

All conferences agreed, but big conferences pushed hardest<\/p>\n

Gavitt said none of the 32 conferences in the NCAA objected to the proposal, though it\u2019s no secret the power leagues have been pushing this the hardest. <\/p>\n

Those schools don\u2019t want to see promising teams left out of what remains the best postseason in college sports, especially in favor of lesser conference champions who earn automatic bids. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got some really, really good teams who are going to end up in that 9, 10, 11 (seed) category that I think should be moved\u201d into the 64-team bracket, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said last year in discussing how he favored expansion.<\/p>\n

The new beer and wine money will add to what the NCAA can distribute in \u201cunits\u201d that are earned for placing teams in the bracket and then for every round those teams advance. Last year, that amounted to about $350,000 per unit<\/a> for the men\u2019s tournament.<\/p>\n

Some of that extra money will go to the small guys, too. This gives all the 16 seeds (and some 15s) a chance to play an evenly matched game in the play-in round, then maybe win that game and the extra \u201cunit\u201d that comes with it. <\/p>\n

\u201cAlso, as we continue to grow our basketball profile, additional at-large spots positions\u201d are possible, Big Sky Conference commissioner Tom Wistrcill said. <\/p>\n

Leaders in the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC have all acknowledged that smaller programs help make March Madness what it is, all the while steadily expanding their own power in NCAA decision-making. That brings with it the tacit threat that they could split off and fracture the single thing the NCAA does best \u2014 the basketball tournament. <\/p>\n

This move might forestall that. What it isn\u2019t expected to do is drastically change the TV element, at least not beyond the advertising component.<\/p>\n

Gavitt said the new games will likely be part of tripleheaders on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The NCAA will find a site to join the traditional First Four host, Dayton, Ohio, for some of the games. Then, come Thursday, there will be 64 teams in a bracket and a tournament that looks comfortingly familiar: three weeks of hoops capped off by the Final Four. <\/p>\n

Gavitt said it was impossible to predict what might come after the current TV deal expires but that 76 teams is \u201cmaxing out the opportunity here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything\u2019s possible, I guess, in 2032 or beyond,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I can say with confidence that this is the format that will be in place through 2032, and, we think, for a long time after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP March Madness: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The magical March Madness cocktail will now include eight more teams, eight more games and more of one…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":781405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[319753,38058,1339,11140,1428,1369,319750,57,171942,6323,2862,4346,319752,519,31596,62,319751,61,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-781404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-amanda-braun","9":"tag-atlantic-coast-conference","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-big-ten-conference","12":"tag-college-football","13":"tag-college-sports","14":"tag-dan-gavitt","15":"tag-general-news","16":"tag-greg-sankey","17":"tag-in-state-wire","18":"tag-indiana","19":"tag-john-calipari","20":"tag-keith-gill","21":"tag-north-carolina","22":"tag-southeastern-conference","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-tom-wistrcill","25":"tag-u-s-news","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116537650471604761","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}