Bing to predict NCAA bracket champs – SportsBusiness Daily (subscription)
Bing is bringing its analytics to March Madness.
Microsoft’s search engine moved into the business of using its data analytics over the last year to predict winners for the Oscars, Grammys, elections and sports competitions like the World Cup and NFL games. Now Seattle-based Bing will create its own version of bracketology by analyzing 10 years of NCAA tournament and team data to predict bracket winners in this year’s men’s basketball championship.
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Bing struck a multiyear corporate partnership with the NCAA last week that will provide the search engine with access to much of the same analytics used by the NCAA’s selection committee. The deal was made by Turner and CBS Sports, which own the rights and sell the NCAA’s corporate partner program. Partner deals at this level typically go for the high seven to low eight figures annually.
Bing, which will carry the designation of the NCAA’s official bracket data partner, had planned since late last year to predict March Madness games, using whatever data it could find through normal searches on the Web. But when the Turner/CBS sales team came calling early this year, they were able to agree on a deal that would provide Bing with analytics unique to the NCAA.
“We were going to do this anyway, but partnering with the NCAA simply provides another layer of validity,” said Bryan Saftler, Bing’s senior marketing manager in Seattle.
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The new deal, negotiated by Bing’s in-house staff, went into effect on Selection Sunday with integration into the CBS “Selection Show.” Bing advertising also will run throughout the tournament on CBS and Turner channels, and its ongoing bracket predictions will be posted on Bing.com.
“There’s so much data available and Bing will be able to consolidate it and make it more usable,” said Keith Martin, the NCAA’s managing director of marketing and broadcast alliances.
As part of this partnership, the NCAA has pulled 10 years of raw historical data about teams, tournaments, win-loss ratio, home vs. away stats, and other key information. Walter Sun, Microsoft’s principal applied science manager, will analyze and review the data, and the predictions will be showcased in the broadcasts.
Bing also will have the opportunity to cross-promote its predictions with other NCAA partners that run official bracket contests, such as Capital One, Unilever, Allstate and Buick.
“We’ve been running simulations off the last 10 seasons of the tournament to see how closely we could predict the outcome, and we’re feeling really confident,” Saftler said. “It’s going to give fans the chance to build a smarter bracket.”
The search engine also expects to benefit from the social conversation around its predictions.
“The average person really researches or follows only about five teams,” Saftler said. “You’ve got 68 teams in the field. How are you going to follow that many teams? This way, you can fill in the teams that you know in your bracket and let Bing fill in the rest.”
Bing’s analytics have determined that there are 9.2 quintillion possible outcomes within the field of 64, and that number grows to 147 quintillion when taking all 68 teams into account.
Saftler said the Bing algorithm that predicts the brackets needs about five hours to process the data and fill out the brackets once they are set.
“It’s a great way for Bing to showcase its capabilities,” said Will Funk, Turner’s senior vice president for sponsorship integration and business development, who along with CBS’s Chris Simko oversees the NCAA partner program.
The Turner/CBS sales team had been actively seeking partners in the technology realm, but Bing’s approach to data analysis and predictions “enhances the consumer experience,” Funk said.
Bing owns about 19 percent market share, compared with the Goliath — Google — which has 67 percent of the market.
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