NCAA women’s basketball tournament advertising inventory is sold out

The GIST: Advertisers are mad for March Madness. Yesterday, ESPN announced that it sold out its NCAA women’s basketball tournament advertising inventory — including branding opportunities outside of the competition's 67 games — for the second consecutive year.

The details: ESPN scored 15 broadcast partners and nearly 100 advertisers for the 2023 championship, up from last year’s 14 sponsors and 22 advertisers. The newest arrivals to the Big Dance are Aflac, hair salon chain Great Clips, Intuit QuickBooks, footwear company OOFOS, Under Armour and the U.S. Army.

• Returning partner Nissan also stepped up its commitment, becoming the new co-presenting sponsor of ESPN’s bracket challenge alongside Capital One. Gotta get’cha head in the game.

The rest: The broadcaster also sold a wide range of ad inventory across numerous verticals. Capital One and AT&T renewed their support of The Bird & Taurasi Show, while Nissan, insurance brand Principal, Wendy’s and Xfinity will back ESPN’s live digital shows covering women’s March Madness.

• Advertisers are slapping their logos on ESPN’s socials, too — AT&T, Buick, Intuit, Nissan, the U.S. Army and Wendy’s booked custom tourney-related integrations on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat.

Zooming out: Women’s March Madness emerged as one of American sports’ hottest properties last year after averaging 634K viewers per game and earning an audience of over 5M for the final, so advertisers and ESPN responded accordingly with increased demand and offerings. See what happens when you adequately cover women’s sports?