You’ve heard the expression- “you can’t buy publicity like that?” Well if you did it would cost $512,382,703, according to a study done by Borshoff, which monitored and evaluated media coverage of the Butler University college basketball team from mid-March to mid-June, 2011. During that period, Butler garnered an estimated half-a-billion $ through television, print and on-line news coverage. When factoring in social media, the audience reach surpassed 69 billion.
Don’t forget all the great Bulldogs articles out there this spring like “Matt Howard’s NBA Draft Stock,” the early entry analysis of Shelvin Mack; which featured numerous Mark Morrison “Return of the Mack” jokes, and coverage of the oppression of their live mascot Blue II. These pieces were integral to that half a billion dollars.
“The incredible exposure that the run to the final game generated goes well beyond the media monitoring report, but this study is an indication of a very significant amount of publicity that Butler has received through our athletics program,” stated Butler Director of Athletics Barry Collier.
The study by Borshoff found that the Bulldogs performance generated $60,378,084.41 in television publicity value, $2,792,954.18 in print publicity value and $449,211,664.31 in on-line publicity value. The study did not consider the publicity value of radio broadcasts or talk shows.
Television coverage during the final two weeks of the NCAA Tournament provided more than 7,600 mentions of the Butler men’s basketball team, with an estimated publicity value of more than $42.5 million. The championship game’s publicity value was estimated at more than $2.2 million. Overall, Butler basketball received nearly 10,000 mentions and reached an estimated audience of 1.4 billion.
The study also tracked social media activity on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and other popular sites from March through June. Mentions of Butler basketball spiked on the day of the NCAA championship game with 3,426 posts and an estimated audience of 3.6 million. The overall audience reached by social media was estimated at more than 12 million.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, an official Google News site that generates millions of unique visitors. He’s also a regular contributor to Chicago Now, Walter Football.com, Yardbarker, and Fox Sports You can follow him on Twitter