The preliminary round of the men’s NCAA tournament is nothing to sleep on.

March Madness officially tips off Tuesday night with the First Four in Dayton—and crucial $2 million payment units are on the line for advancing to latter stages of the tournament.

Automatic qualifiers Wagner and Howard will compete for the West Region’s 16-seed, while fellow conference champions Grambling State and Montana State will battle for the 16 in the Midwest. At-large matchups featuring Colorado State–Virginia (Midwest) and Colorado–Boise State (South) will round out the preliminary action in Ohio over the next two days.

Since the bracket expanded to 68 teams in 2011, a First Four team has made it to the second round every year except once (’19). First Four winners have gone on to 21 main NCAA tournament games over the past 13 years and twice made it to the Final Four (VCU in ’11, UCLA in ’21). Last year, Fairleigh Dickinson became the first automatic qualifier from the First Four to win a tournament game, with the Knights’ upset of top-seeded Purdue leading to all kinds of off-court success, like a new media-rights deal with YES Network.

Staying Tru

If you want to watch the First Four, you’ll need to make sure your TV package includes TruTV—the oft-forgotten cable stepchild of Warner Bros. Discovery, the company that, alongside CBS, is paying some $900 million annually to broadcast March Madness. For years, sports fans have joked about TruTV’s irrelevance outside of March, but this month marks a major pivot for the channel, which is transitioning to airing sports content full-time on weeknights moving forward. 

Last year, First Four games averaged 1.35 million viewers on TruTV, down from the 1.75 million action in 2022, which benefited from the inclusion of Notre Dame and set a record for the two-night format. (In ’21, all four games aired on one night, spread across TruTV and TBS.) But after this year’s games on TruTV—which will include eight first-round matchups—WBD is hoping fans will stick around for the channel’s new nightly TNT Sports Update program, as well as a betting-focused show, plus simulcasts and alternate casts of NBA, NHL, MLB games.

Where the Madness Begins

The 13,000-seat University of Dayton Arena has hosted every First Four game outside of the pandemic-impacted 2021 tournament dating back to ’11. And even before that, it was the site of the one-game opening round featuring the two lowest-ranked automatic qualifiers, which began in ’01.

UD Arena routinely gets near-capacity crowds: About 25,000 fans typically attend First Four games over two nights. As of Monday afternoon, the cheapest official resale tickets cost $89 before taxes and fees. And for locals looking to capitalize on the new business in town, the March Madness bump will continue later this week, if not longer: Dayton’s men’s basketball notched its first NCAA tournament bid since 2017, earning a seven-seed; now the Flyers are set to face 10-seed Nevada on Thursday in Memphis.

The intrigue surrounding Disney leadership succession is heating up, perhaps with as much drama as the popular TV show of the same name.

Current CEO Bob Iger returned to the job with an initial expiration date at the end of 2024, only to sign a two-year contract extension that pushes that exit out to the end of ’26, when he’ll be 75. But, with nearly three years to go, interest and speculation are quickly rising about who will lead Disney in its next era.

Bloomberg reported last week that ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro is one of four leading internal candidates, joining Dana Walden and Alan Bergman, co-chairs of Disney Entertainment, and Josh D’Amaro, who heads up the company’s theme parks business. Pitaro’s listing there is hardly a surprise, as he and Iger have been close for years, and his name has already come up in succession talks for more than a year.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal profiled Pitaro on Sunday, detailing his efforts to remake the sports media giant in an era of unprecedented media turbulence while also describing him as “one of the contenders to succeed” Iger. 

A New Level of Urgency

The Disney succession issue, however, is now heating up for several reasons. Not only is ESPN on the cusp of several major initiatives, including a full, direct-to-consumer offering, bidding for another set of NBA rights, and potentially the sale of part of the network, but Disney is also facing increased shareholder pressure. 

Activist investor Nelson Peltz, in particular, has lobbied hard on several fronts, including for more clarity on the succession plan, rescaling the TV and movie business, and a bundling of the ESPN+ and Netflix streaming services. He is also pushing for board seats to further advance his case, engaging in a broad-based campaign, which includes various white papers and other advocacy efforts. Disney has opposed Peltz on virtually every front. 

Helping Disney’s case, however, are improved earnings and a 25% surge in shares so far this year, closing at $113.85 per share Monday. Perhaps seeing some of that growth, influential proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis recommended Disney shareholders withhold votes for all board candidates except Disney’s own selections.

Pitaro, among others, ruffled feathers with the recent announcement of a Fox-ESPN-Warner Bros. Discovery streaming alliance, but he has several major pluses in his favor, including having rebuilt a once-fractured ESPN relationship with the NFL and landing the network’s first Super Bowls.

IndyCar is heading to Southern California this weekend for a new race with record-breaking prize money, as the series continues to get closer to the finish line of a new media-rights deal that should come with a pay bump of its own.

Dubbed the Thermal Club $1 Million Challenge, a 12-car race Sunday won’t hand out points for the series’ season-long championship, but it will pay out $1.756 million, the highest total purse for an event in IndyCar history outside of the Indianapolis 500. The winning driver will pocket $500,000. “It’s a big payday, so it will have their attention, for sure,” IndyCar CEO Mark Miles tells Front Office Sports.

The race is another shift in IndyCar’s strategy to stay competitive with other racing circuits and the ever-evolving broader sports landscape. In 2023, IndyCar generated its highest viewership since ’11, averaging 1.32 million viewers per race, and now it’s looking to cash in as its deal with NBC Sports, which reportedly brings in about $20 million annually, expires at the end of this season. “We would weigh reach above all else, but we expect to get some kind of increase in our rights fees,” Miles says.

NBC is interested in returning, but plenty of other parties have inquired. “Initially, there were several platforms that we had great discussions with—kind of did a road show to get in front of them,” Miles explains. Fox Sports, in particular, has proved to be a strong contender. “They were interested when we made our last NBC deal,” Miles says. “So, this is not a newfound interest; they like motor sports.” 

IndyCar would prefer to end up with one media partner, rather than splitting its rights across multiple broadcasters, says Miles. He confirmed IndyCar had conversations with more than three of what he called “major disruptive streamers,” but he said it would be a stretch to end up with both a traditional broadcaster and streamer for this deal.

Now negotiations are shifting from logistics to economics, and Miles says the field of suitors is “narrowing some.” A conservative deadline in Miles’s mind is having a completed deal by the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend. “I don’t see it exceeding that,” he says.