Estimated Publicity Value of the 2014 Dayton Flyers NCAA Basketball Tournament Bid

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2 Executive Summary The Dayton Flyers upset victory over The Ohio State University Buckeyes uplifted community spirits, instilled pride and gave Dayton national prominence. The Flyers continued success resulted in intense media exposure. Newspaper articles, television reports, Tweets, and Facebook posts placed an unprecedented spotlight on Dayton. Commissioners Joey D. Williams and Matt Joseph requested an examination of the media exposure. The Commissioners asked two key questions: (1)Did NCAA tournament related publicity portray Dayton in a positive light? (2) How much money was the resultant media coverage worth? A mixed method, multi-media examination was performed to assess the quality and value of media exposure from the start of the tournament, March 18, until the loss to the University of Florida Gators on March 29. Background The City of Dayton and the University of Dayton have a long history of collaboration. The surprise success of the Dayton Flyers in the 2014 NCAA Basketball Tournament added another layer of connectedness between the University of Dayton and the City. Dayton s status as a tournament underdog grew into a Cinderella narrative that captured the attention of the nation. The underdog status of the Flyers is seen by many as emblematic of the entire City. The community s connection to Flyers basketball is exemplified by exceptional game attendance, as well the NCAA First Four and Dayton Hoopla efforts. The connection between Dayton and the NCAA basketball tournament is clear: Dayton is a basketball town. Attendance at Dayton Flyers games throughout the season averages 12,316, slightly less than the arena capacity of 13,400. Comparatively, average home game attendance in the Atlantic 10 (A10) was under 6,000. Before this year s tournament, Forbes valued the Dayton Flyers basketball team at more than $10 million. With the exception of Xavier and Syracuse, the student population for schools on the Forbes list far eclipsed that of UD. In their analysis, Forbes cited alumni buy-in and community participation as factors in their valuation. The first round of the men s NCAA tournament has been held in Dayton for 13 consecutive years and Dayton has hosted more NCAA tournament games than any other location. In 2014, the Dayton Hoopla committee, assisted by the Montgomery County Visitor s Bureau and the City of Dayton, undertook unprecedented measures to welcome NCAA teams and ensure attendance. The Hoopla Ticket program recruited NBA players Kent Bazemore and former Flyers Chris Johnson and Brian Roberts to donate First Four tickets to Airmen stationed at Wright- Patterson Air Force Base. Dayton Hoopla also sponsored a kick-off event and community 4-Miler. With the help of the City of Dayton Department of Aviation, the local organizing committee undertook an unprecedented welcoming program. Participating teams were assigned an ambassador and a welcoming party cheered on players upon arrival in Dayton. City of Dayton engineers installed colored lights on municipal bridges; each team had a bridge that displayed their team colors. Local bars and restaurants 2

3 participated by hosting fans from across the country. Anticipation was high when the Second Round game between OSU and the Dayton Flyers was branded as the Battle of Ohio. The media portrayed the first game as an epic show-down; the big brother, little brother dynamic of the game garnered additional media attention and grabbed headlines. Twitter mentions of the #DaytonFlyers increased markedly after the first win against OSU. Hours after the Flyers beat the Buckeyes, handle was verified by Twitter, solidifying the Flyers as a social media success. Facebook posts exploded and television media coverage in Ohio hit a fever pitch. Method The Flyers success resulted in an increased awareness of Dayton, but the local economic impact of the Flyer s success is less obvious. The Montgomery County Visitor s Bureau (MCVB) will perform an economic impact study on the First Four games. This study does not duplicate the MCVB effort, and only seeks to measure the publicity value to the City of Dayton that was a result of the Flyers tournament run. Before the media analysis was performed, an informal poll of business owners in the City of Dayton was taken. They were asked if they thought the University of Dayton Flyers Elite 8 run had an impact on their business. Results were mixed. It was clear from these conversations that the increased media exposure constituted the bulk of the value to Dayton. While the Flyers success is directly linked to the upswing in media attention, many factors, including poor weather and tax refunds, could account for mixed sales figures. There is precedence for this type of media study after a successful NCAA tournament bid. Butler University, Virginia Commonwealth (VCU), George Mason and Wichita State have assessed a total economic value resulting from Final Four runs. Butler and George Mason included NCAA setaside units, retail sales, and increases in enrollment applications. The studies from Butler and George Mason were performed by in-house researchers and focused on longer-term effects. We used similar methods than those employed by VCU and also incorporated qualitative text analysis. There were three major components to this study: game play, television exposure and social media exposure. A value for actual game time was assessed based upon the cost of a 30 second advertisement. Each 40 minute game represented its own distinct media value. Because of the broadcast agreement between the NCAA and CBS/ Turner Time Warner, the games were simulcast on CBS, TBS and TNT; this tailored viewership by region and increased national viewership by replaying content over multiple channels. To analyze television exposure, Google Analytics and TVEyes were used to gather 10 second media clips that mentioned Dayton, Dayton Flyers or the University of Dayton. Clips were isolated and limited to the timeframe between March 18 and March 30. The text of each clip was examined. To ascertain the value of 3

4 journey ended at the Elite 8. This is significant because the value of media exposure is like a domino effect- the longer the team is in play, the more sustained the media coverage- ultimately resulting in greater value. Further, advertisements rates rise exponentially in proportion to the tournament round. Advertisements are estimated to cost more than $1.4 million in the championship game, while they are worth about $100,000 for the first three rounds and $350,000 for the Sweet 16 and Elite 8. social media content, we analyzed data from the University of Dayton and Simply Measured. To get an in depth picture of the social media value, we examined associated hashtags, words and links. We performed text analysis of Tweets, Facebook posts, BuzzFeed Lists, Storify and HuffingtonPost Live. For more information about the methodology and text analysis, see Appendix A. Results The estimated publicity value for game play, television media, and social media is $72,660,482. This estimate reflects television clips from news outlets, syndicated television programs and sports analyses, as well as actual game play. The game play value is estimated at $36.7 million; clips from cable and network television brought a combined value of $34.5 million. Social media exposure was harder to gauge. We used a best practice valuation of for Twitter impressions and $2.4 for a tagged Facebook post. Together, the publicity value for Facebook and Twitter is $726,321. For break outs and charts, see Appendix B. George Mason, VCU, Butler and Wichita State have valuations ranging between $500 million and $700 million. The difference for Dayton is that the Flyers did not make it to the Final Four; their Successive upset wins against Syracuse and Stanford pushed media mentions of Dayton, Dayton Flyers, and University of Dayton across the country. Associated media stories about the City of Dayton, the First Four and Dayton s Cinderella tournament run appeared in 207 out of 210 major television markets in the United States, in addition to syndicated stories in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. From March 19th until March 30th, the Dayton Flyers were mentioned on cable and syndicated network television 2,871 times. Text analysis of the stories suggested a positive association between Dayton, basketball and March Madness. Media stories related to the 2nd Round game against Ohio State were mixed. The Flyers won by one point, and news stories referred to Dayton as edging out Big Brother OSU. In news media and sports programs, Dayton was cast as the underdog against Syracuse. After the Syracuse win, a Cinderella narrative emerged. More credibility was given to Dayton, and stories about the City of Dayton and its affinity for basketball received mentions in major media markets including New York City, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta and Detroit; as well as in all major Ohio markets. Geographical location of the game also contributed to more television time in major markets, particularly in New York. Television clips on Canadian television mentioned player Dyshawn Pierre. Video of student celebrations, in particular a video featuring University President 4

5 Dan Curran, was replayed in hundreds of news and sports analysis broadcasts. It was also singled out in online news outlets and YouTube. Stories on HuffingtonPost.com and Buzzfeed.com were particularly popular. While a publicity value would be hard to calculate for these websites, the BuzzFeed story alone had more than 52,000 views and the HuffingtonPost feature had more than a thousand Facebook shares. Local news coverage in the Dayton market placed heavy emphasis on the celebrations after the games, though mentions of the success of the team usually preceded a story about the street parties. By the end of the tournament, there were more than 100 million impressions of Dayton related Twitter hashtags, including #Dayton, #DaytonFlyers, #FlyerNation, #FlyerPride, #UD and #D8N. There was a core fan base that consistently referenced Dayton or the Dayton Flyers on social media from March 18 to March 31. The social media bandwagon grew exponentially larger the longer the Flyers were in the tournament. This is consistent with the Domino Effect seen in other social media studies. Facebook issued a report that found the Dayton Flyers were the most posted about team in the NCAA tournament. Simply Measured analysis of Tweets by location demonstrated that local fans constituted the majority of Tweeters for the first three games. From March 18 to March 30, account received 90.1 million impressions and more than 52,000 tweets; nearly all mentioned winning, basketball, March Madness or the NCAA. Keywords associated with were not as clearly associated with the basketball game; the most popular key words were party, riot police and project. Twitter account and the official Dayton-City Government account were tagged by media personalities, sportscasters and, fans, elected officials. University of Dayton was an oft repeated meme, as was Dayton s underdog status. Outside of game play and game recaps, the Cinderella narrative was the most frequently used and was syndicated across the country. The social media effect was more regional, as fans and alumni took to their favorite social media outlets to express their feelings of surprise, happiness and pride. Overall, we found the media representation of Dayton and the Dayton Flyers was positive. THE 5

6 Appendix A Methods, Continued It took more than 56 dedicated staff hours to collect, scrub, and perform calculations for this study. Calculations of the advertisement value of game play were based upon the advertising rate charged by CBS/Time Warner in Because of simulcasting, media exposure of actual game time was increased. To reflect this, 30 seconds of each game was assigned a value relative to the combined advertisement value of that particular game. CBS/Turner Time Warner charged a fluctuating rate to advertisers based on a formula accounting for tournament round, television station and viewer reach. Therefore valuation of game time was based on the formula the NCAA used in Yet, cost for a 30 second advertisement increased between 2013 and 2014; the exact amount is not known. Kantar Media Group, Forbes and Business Week all value the 2014 NCAA at more than $1.2 billion, an increase due to rising revenue from advertisement sales. Given the average increase in revenue is about 2% per year, a 2% increase was calculated from the game play estimate and was added for comparison. Thus the raw value of $36,000,000 was adjusted to $36,720,000 to represent increased revenues from 2013 to Television media clips constituted mentions in local and national news broadcasts, clips and replays on sports networks, as well as mentions on syndicated comedy and variety shows. We isolated clips were and they were limited to the timeframe between March 18 and March 30. We analyzed the text of each clip for keywords NCAA, March Madness, Basketball, Dayton Flyers, Flyers, University of Dayton, Dayton. We also identified Cinderella, Underdog and Party as associated terms. Clips that were not associated with the basketball tournament- crime, interviews with professors, documentaries and other content were eliminated. Next, duplicates were eliminated. Media broadcasters mentioned the Dayton Flyers and the University of Dayton interchangeably. Thus, there were multiple mentions in the same clip. These duplicate mentions were eliminated from the data set, so that the data reflected one instance of each 10 second clip. To ascertain the value of social media content, we analyzed data from the University of Dayton and Simply Measured. To get an in depth picture of the social media value, we examined associated hashtags, words and links. We performed text analysis of Tweets, Facebook posts, BuzzFeed Lists, Storify and HuffingtonPost Live. Using metrics from SumUp and Kantar, we assigned a value to each Twitter impression. Based on metrics used in media studies performed by Kantar, Simply Measured, SumUp and Forbes, we assigned $2.4 value to a Facebook share. Previous research suggests that there is little value in Facebook Likes. Posts that mention Dayton, Dayton Flyers or University of Dayton without using a tag have little to no value because they are limited to the users friend network. Therefore only shares of NCAA basketball related posts that tagged the University of Dayton, Dayton Flyers, and City of Dayton- Government pages were used. 6

7 Appendix B Figures Figure 1 Estimated Publicity Value based on 2013 Advertising Costs NCAA Round Opponent Ad Cost per Game Time Estimated Value 30 seconds* 2nd Ohio State $100, $4,000, rd Syracuse U $100, $4,000, Sweet16 Stanford U $350, $14,000, Elite8 U of Florida $350, $14,000, $36,000, Figure 2 Adjusted 2014 Publicity Value 2% Yearly Increase $720, Estimated Ad Revenue of Game Play $36,720, Network TV $8,396, Cable TV $26,097, Total $71,934, Figure 3 Publicity Value by Media Type $40,000, $35,000, $30,000, $25,000, $20,000, $15,000, $10,000, $5,000, $- GamePlay Television Clips Social Media Value in Dollars Figure 4 $800, $700, $600, $500, Estimated Publicity Value of Social Media 7

8 $20,000, $15,000, Value in Dollars $10,000, Estimated Publicity Value of the 2014 Dayton Flyers NCAA Basketball Tournament Bid $5,000, $- GamePlay Television Social Media Appendix B Clips Figure 4 $800, $700, $600, $500, $400, $300, $200, $100, Estimated Publicity Value of Social Media $- Twitter Facebook Associated Ad Value 8