How College Basketball Finds Itself As A Growing Industry

College basketball is a booming industry, and there are a number of ways that fans are engaged. One of those is by making college basketball picks, but the popularity of the sport is large because of the massive event at the end of the season, March Madness.

People will make picks with hopes of winning a bunch of money from their bracket pools.

How College Basketball Finds Itself As A Growing Industry

Fantasy College Hoops

There are a number of apps that are starting to offer college fantasy sports. They can be broken down by league – even the low- and mid-major leagues like the Missouri Valley Conference – or choosing multiple conferences to select players from. These leagues are ways to generate extra cash by winning a pool with a group of friends.

There are other games, like playing a season-long team draft. Do a snake draft by selecting a few programs each and have a points system based on the Associated Press top 25 rankings, number of wins in a season, winning the regular season conference championship and conference tournaments, and of course, rewarding teams who advance in the NCAA Tournament.

There are a number of survivor pools that can be played based on conference affiliations or countrywide.

Then there are those who make college basketball predictions as part of survivor leagues with a 68-team field. There are also fans who do not wait until March to get in on the fantasies.

New Era for Athletes

Those who play the games are finally able to make money. While coaches made millions of dollars per year to coach their teams, and even the bad coaches were making significant money, players were not able to profit at all. That is remarkable, given how much money the sport brings in with its television contracts and particularly the NCAA Tournament.

Thanks to name, image and likeness rules, athletes are able to profit from themselves. Those players can make money by doing a service for a business, such as an advertisement or meet and greet, or they can sell their autographs and pictures and get a cut of the profits for other appearances.

They can also be content creators on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok and make money off of the videos they produce. Basically, the only stipulation is it can not be alcohol-related or involved in any way, shape, or form.

There are also opportunities for players to make money off of selling clothing and other apparel. It is a great way for athletes to get support from fans and get a few bucks themselves.

Ticket Sales

No longer are teams and programs the ones who are making money off of ticket sales. Third-party vendors like StubHub, Ticketmaster, TickPick, Gametime, and other entities are able to profit from ticket sales. Some of those include being able to allow fans to resell their tickets.

Though those fans may opt to sell them on a social media platform like Facebook, while they are looking up college basketball picks today, to avoid the fees and get a larger profit than having to share that revenue.

Memorabilia

There are a lot of collectors out there, though some may call them hoarders. Both could be true. Regardless, there are a lot of relics that are hidden in peoples’ collections that they once cherished but have since forgotten. They may be collecting dust or be saved in an unopened box from moving.

People can sell their cherished items, such as famous sports cards, framed photos, autographed basketballs, apparel, and other items, and turn a nice profit if it is of a memorable team or player. Being able to post up at a sports collectors show is a great way to both acquire and sell off items to turn a profit and invest in the future.

What You Can’t Feel

In the era of nonfungible tokens (NFTs), there is a whole new marketplace and way to make money. People will collect moments, or highlights, of certain events. They typically cost a certain price, and a certain number of those moments are released.

It is similar to collecting sports cards, but instead, it lives in a virtual space. This is slowly hitting the college world, but it is expected to grow in popularity as the metaverse, and other digital entities grow.