All teams — but particularly a new team or a team that has sat out the tournament for a while — stand to benefit.
Besides creating a bigger market for ticket and merchandise sales in future seasons, “simply making the NCAA Tournament for the first time provides a boost to the overall marketing value of Northwestern’s athletic program,” said Jim Andrews, senior vice president for sponsorship consulting business IEG.
“It’s very difficult to quantify the impact, but increased attention from casual fans — and even nonfans — in addition to increased excitement of die-hard fans, alumni, students and staff makes sponsoring the program a more attractive proposition for businesses,” he said.
In their first appearance in the tournament’s 79-year history, the Wildcats face off Thursday afternoon against the Vanderbilt Commodores.
The longer the team stays in the tournament, the more excitement it will generate, Andrews said.
The team’s appearance also could mean more invitations to multiteam pre-conference tournaments, stronger alumni financial support and better recruiting prospects, said Michael Neuman, executive vice president for Scout Sports & Entertainment in New York.
“Every top-tier high school basketball player dreams of playing in the NCAA tournament, so inclusion in the NCAA tournament means Northwestern has a better story to tell on the recruiting trail,” he said. “A deep run in March further enhances their ability to realize these benefits, but the foundation is firmly established” even if the team exits early.
The biggest single benefit from this year’s team could be “the awakening of an affluent, highly educated fan base that has another reason to reconnect with their alma mater and contribute to an academic institution that hasn’t had a lot to cheer about for a long time,” Neuman said.
Ellen Zavian, who teaches sports law at George Washington University and who has been a sports agent, said enrollment applications at Northwestern could go up because of greater name awareness.
“Win or lose, Northwestern will gain additional media exposure and have increased name recognition, and so applicants will recall the name of Northwestern above another school, perhaps,” she said.
Some call it the “Flutie effect.”
In a 1984 game against the University of Miami, Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie threw a last-second Hail Mary pass that was caught for a game-winning touchdown. Applications shot up 30 percent, according to a Harvard Business School article from 2013 that studied how sports success affected college marketing. Similarly, Georgetown University applications rose 45 percent between 1983 and 1986 after a surge of basketball success.
Northwestern has even been here before: Its applications rose 21 percent after the football team won a Big 10 championship in 1995, according to the Harvard article.