Celebrating 25 Years of Madness: 2023 ESPN Tournament Challenge

• Tournament brackets available Sunday night, March 12, following Selection Sunday shows
• Fans who correctly pick National Champions entered to win Grand Prizes
• 25th Anniversary Prizes: random drawing for fans submitting 25 brackets
• Exclusive tools for ESPN+ subscribers: Bracket Predictor, Bracket Analyzer and more
• Tournament Challenge Marathon: Five days of analysis, advice and more, beginning Sunday night

ESPN Tournament Challenge, the No. 1 most popular college basketball bracket game for both the men’s and women’s tournaments, is open and ready for Selection Sunday.

• ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge presented by Acura, Allstate and McDonald’s and Women’s Tournament Challenge presented by Capital One and Nissan will give fans the chance to compete with friends, family and others – including celebrities and ESPN talent – by predicting the winner of each tournament game from the Round of 64 through the championship final.
• Brackets for both men’s and women’s games will be available following the conclusion of Selection Sunday shows on ESPN, which begin Sunday, March 12, at 6 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET, for the men’s and women’s tournaments, respectively.

Fans can submit up to 25 brackets and join up to 10 groups each at ESPN.com/bracket for Men’s TC and ESPN.com/tcwomen for Women’s TC.

• ESPN’s Tournament Challenge includes game features that make it faster and easier to fill out multiple brackets, as well as unique tools and editorial content to help fans make the right picks.
• Like allESPN Fantasy games, Tournament Challenge is free to play.

Brackets can also be completed and submitted on the ESPN Tournament Challenge App for iOS and Android, or on the ESPN App.

• The ESPN Tournament Challenge App allows fans to create and join groups, and to quickly navigate between men’s and women’s brackets, sorting by total points, maximum points or alphabetically.
• The TC App also gives fans advanced live scoring and bracket results through the Scores tab on the app, expert analysis and matchup previews, opt-in push notifications for up-to-the-second scores, news and video updates, and the ability to pre-fill brackets before Selection Sunday.

Fans looking for an edge while completing both Men’s and Women’s brackets can turn to exclusive tools available only to ESPN+ subscribers.

• ESPN+Bracket Predictor uses advanced data to help fans evaluate every game and make more informed picks.
• ESPN+Bracket Analyzer uses objective data to provide a round-by-round forecast of the odds of getting each of your picks correct.

A new feature this year is the Perfect Bracket Tracker, a fun and shareable way for fans to track in real-time the number of perfect brackets remaining, as well as the games that have had, and could potentially have, the most impact on perfect brackets.

For both the Men’s TC and Women’s TC, fans who pick the National Champion will be automatically entered into a random drawing to win one of 10 Grand Prizes of $5,000 each.

• Also, in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of ESPN Tournament Challenge, fans who fill out and complete 25 brackets in either game will have a chance to win 25 randomly drawn prizes of $1,000.
• Entries forMen’s Tournament Challenge will be accepted until just prior to the tip-off of the tournament’s Round of 64 on Thursday, March 16. Women’s Tournament Challenge will accept registration until just prior to tip-off of the first game on Friday, March 17.

ESPN’s Tournament Challenge Marathon will once again serve fans a concentrated dose of bracket and college basketball analysis and advice for both the men’s and women’s tournaments on popular ESPN shows, including SportsCenter, Get Up!, First Take, This Just In, NBA Today, Daily Wager, and Keyshawn, JWill and Max.

• TheTournament Challenge Marathon starts Sunday, March 12, when the men’s and women’s tournament brackets are announced, and continues through Friday, March 17, when the women’s Round of 64 tips off.

The Marathon will also include special college basketball programming, including:

• Bracketology – Field of 136 Presented by Lowe’s will provide reactions to both the men’s and women’s brackets on ESPN2 at 10 to 11:30 p.m. ET, on Sunday, March 12. The show will re-air on Monday at 8 to 9:30 p.m. ET, on ESPN2.
• Monday, March 13:
  • The Jay Bilas ‘My Bracket is Better Than Your Bracket’ Special returns for the third year at 6 to 7 p.m. ET, on ESPN2.
  • Daily Wager:Tournament Challenge Special, live from Las Vegas at 9:30 to 11 p.m. ET, on ESPN2.

In addition to all of the information and features of ESPN’s Tournament Challenge game, as well as hundreds of games during Champ Week across ESPN Networks and ESPN+, fans can access comprehensive coverage of the men’s and women’s tournaments including scores, news, analysis and feature stories on ESPN.com and the ESPN App.

In 2022, the ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge game collected 17.3 million completed brackets and set single-day records for signups in the two days before the game closed.

• At the peak period of entries shortly before the start of the first game of the Round of 64, fans registered more than 30,000 brackets per minute.

The ESPN Women’s Tournament Challenge saw a 76 percent year-over-year increase in 2022, part of a significant upward trend in the popularity of women’s sports and women’s basketball in particular.

• Earlier this season, a then top-3 matchup between LSU and South Carolina averaged 1.5 million viewers, becoming the most-viewed regular season women’s college basketball matchup on any network since 2010.
• ESPN also was recently awarded “Best Innovation” by the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association for the debut of the ESPN Fantasy Women’s Basketball game in 2022.

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