Coronavirus Update: NCAA Cancelation Set To Cause Losses Worth Millions Of Dollars To Company

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) could be slammed with a huge loss of revenue after it decided to cancel NCAA March Madness on Thursday in the wake of the deadly coronavirus outbreak.

The NCAA March Madness tournament, which is played every spring in the U.S., is a single-elimination competition and comprises as many as 64 college basketball teams from Division I level. It is undoubtedly one of the most lucrative events in college sports in the country.

The NCAA’s Division I men’s basketball tournament reportedly generates $867.5 million annually from just the television and marketing rights, according to the institution’s website. The event arranges a major portion of the NCAA’s yearly profits. In 2019, the NCAA earned approximate $933 million combined from media rights, ticket sales and sponsorships.

With the decision of NCAA President Mark Emmert to scrap the various tournaments and upcoming championships, the ticket revenue anyway was effectively eliminated. It is understood that lost revenue alone will cost the NCAA tens of millions of dollars.

As of now, there is no clarity about how the NCAA's decision will affect its broadcast rights deals with CBS and WarnerMedia's TNT.

Earlier, the NCAA body had announced that it would still go ahead with the tournaments behind closed doors. However, the news of NBA player Rudy Gobert of Utah Jazz testing positive for coronavirus forced the other U.S. sports leagues to take quick action and NCAA ended up canceling their spring competitions.

So far it is known that the NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS have all suspended activities along with at least 14 NCAA conferences canceling their individual postseason basketball tournaments. Spring, which is arguably the busiest time on the college sports calendar, has been forced to surrender to coronavirus in order to keep everyone associated with it safely.

SEC and Big 12 are the conferences in NCAA’s basketball chart and their respective commissioners, Greg Sankey and Bob Bowlsby were asked how the whole coronavirus scenario will affect the student eligibility next season, to which they replied that there was still no confirmation about the same.

“Today, NCAA President Mark Emmert and the Board of Governors canceled the Division I men’s and women’s 2020 basketball tournaments, as well as all remaining winter and spring NCAA championships. This decision is based on the evolving COVID-19 public health threat, our ability to ensure the events do not contribute to spread of the pandemic, and the impracticality of hosting such events at any time during this academic year given ongoing decisions by other entities,” the NCAA wrote in their official statement.