The first Sweet 16 of men’s March Madness without a mid-major—and the smallest number of conferences represented (four)—may not appeal to college basketball fans who prefer Cinderella stories.

But NCAA tournament TV rights holders CBS Sports and TNT Sports are likely just fine with the power shift.

While there won’t be the intrigue of an out-of-nowhere underdog continuing a surprise run (the lowest seed is No. 10 Arkansas, led by six-time Final Four coach John Calipari), the breadth of college basketball bluebloods and major programs from the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, and SEC should make for strong TV ratings as the teams with some of the largest national fan bases battle to make the Elite Eight and Final Four.

“As these conferences get bigger, they bring along bigger TV audiences,” longtime sports media consultant Lee Berke told Front Office Sports. “So, the fact that you’re going chalk in a lot of these matchups just means you’re having these ultimate games being scheduled one after the other.”

By the Numbers

Viewership for the opening day of March Madness delivered a record-high average audience of 9.1 million per game window. Numbers for the remainder of the first and second rounds are not yet available. 

The 10 most-watched games of the men’s college basketball season (including conference tournaments) featured 12 teams, and 9 of those are in the Sweet 16: Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Duke, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, and Tennessee.

Outside of an Illinois-Arkansas clash that drew a season-high 5.17 million viewers on CBS on Thanksgiving Day, Duke–North Carolina (3 million on ESPN) and Alabama-Auburn (2.76 million on ESPN) were the two most-watched regular-season games.

The most notable Cinderella team in recent years is Saint Peter’s, which won three games as a No. 15 seed in 2022. When its run ended against UNC with a 69–49 blowout, the 13.58 million viewers who tuned in on CBS marked the least-watched late Sunday Elite Eight window in six years.

Endeavor’s long-planned move to become a private company again is now complete, with lead investor Silver Lake finalizing its acquisition of the sports and entertainment giant. 

Silver Lake acquired 100% of the outstanding Endeavor shares it didn’t already own, bringing an end to an effort first announced nearly a year ago. Endeavor spent about four years as a public company, but it often struggled on Wall Street as investors did not fully grasp the diverse nature of the company’s holdings, which stretch into events, content production, technology, and athlete representation, among other areas. 

Silver Lake, however, touted its high degree of confidence in Endeavor, which now has a combined enterprise value of $25 billion. In addition to the above fields, Endeavor is also the lead shareholder of the still-publicly traded TKO Group Holdings, the parent company of sports entities including Ultimate Fighting Championship, World Wrestling Entertainment, Professional Bull Riders, IMG, and On Location. It is now moving into boxing. 

“[We] have never sold a share, instead increasing our stake as we remain highly excited about the long-term growth outlook of the company,” said Silver Lake co-CEO and managing partner Egon Durban.

What’s Next?

The privatization of Endeavor sets in motion a series of resulting moves, with potentially more to come. 

Endeavor is now creating a new entity, WME Group, that will include the bulk of the WME talent agency, IMG Licensing, marketing agency 160over90, and nonscripted content business Pantheon Media. Endeavor executive chairman Patrick Whitesell, meanwhile, will leave that role to focus on a separate, Silver Lake–backed sports and media investment platform also announced last April.

Whitesell is also acquiring WME Football, the agency’s football representation business, and will serve active NFL players and coaches. That move helps satisfy conflict-of-interest claims raised by the NFL Players Association that Silver Lake could not have a stake in an agency representing active players while Durban is also a part-owner of the Raiders. WME will still be able to represent retired NFL players and coaches, while Whitesell’s football representation activities will remain separate from his other company backed by Silver Lake. Industry sources said Whitesell is considering a new name for WME Football.

With the Endeavor privatization, that conflict-of-interest issue could soon resurface with another part of Silver Lake’s sprawling empire. The company is also the lead backer of Diamond Baseball Holdings, a fast-growing owner and operator of minor-league baseball teams. The recent deals give Silver Lake an interest in those teams and a talent agency with a presence in baseball. The MLB Players Association has previously raised such concerns around Endeavor’s activities in Minor League Baseball.

StubHub, once a dominant entity in ticket resale that helped make the market appealing to sports leagues and teams, is seeking to go public in a bid to revive its fortunes. 

The company filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a new listing on the New York Stock Exchange, though its submission did not include a target date or share price. StubHub has been owned by multinational ticket company Viagogo since 2020 after being purchased from the publicly traded eBay in a $4.05 billion deal. 

Viagogo is led by Eric Baker, one of StubHub’s founders.

StubHub said in its prospectus that it generated $1.77 billion in revenue in 2024, up 29% from the year before, but saw its net income swing from a $405 million profit to a $2.8 million loss last year as sales, marketing, and administrative costs all increased substantially. 

That same filing, however, detailed a goal to elevate the business, in part through a greater blending of primary and secondary ticketing.

“We are in the early innings of disrupting the legacy primary ticketing model by making our tech-enabled marketplace available to content rights holders to distribute original issuance tickets,” StubHub said. “We believe that buyers want a single, trusted, and reliable destination to buy any ticket anywhere in the world … and do not care whether a ticket is originally issued or resold.”

Market Dynamics 

Roughly two decades ago, StubHub played a highly influential role in elevating the entire ticket resale market—something that previously existed largely in the shadows and was widely shunned by the sports industry. Now, it exists as a fundamental part of all ticketing operations. Over subsequent years, StubHub saw sharply heightened competition from numerous other companies including SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, and Gametime, while Ticketmaster, the largest player in primary ticketing, also moved into the secondary business. 

More recently, ticket resale also has seen heightened turbulence, with many of these players seeing diminished margins and depressed economic results. Vivid Seats went public in 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) but has seen its stock lose more than three-quarters of its value since then. SeatGeek has considered an IPO on multiple occasions but has yet to do so, and according to multiple reports, recently cut about 15% of its staff. 

While sports have been a fairly predictable source of business for these companies, their financial fortunes have often wavered based on the status of big music tours. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, which set a series of financial and attendance records over its 2023–2024 run, temporarily lifted the business but no such major outings are planned for this year.

The StubHub IPO effort, however, arrives ahead of a wave of major international events coming to the U.S. in the next few years, including the men’s 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Summer Olympics.