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March Madness Didn’t Add Sports Fans Near Beef O’Brady’s. It Replaced Them
The Stat: During March Madness week, the College Sports Fan index near Beef O’Brady’s locations rose 4.07 points over the early-March baseline, while the NBA Fanatics index dropped 3.15 points. The sports audience didn’t grow. It rotated.
The Insight: Two weeks ago, we looked at OOH performance near every Beef O’Brady’s in America during St. Patrick’s Day week and found Transit formats lighting up as people moved toward celebrations. This week, we kept the lens on the same trade areas but shifted the question: what happens to the audience composition when March Madness takes over?
The answer is a clean swap. College Basketball Fanatics rose 2.69 index points week over week. College Sports Fans rose 4.07. NBA Fanatics fell 3.15. The overall Sports Fan segment barely moved, up less than a point. The total size of the sports audience stayed flat. The type of sports fan changed.
Louisville tells the story clearly. One of the most college-basketball-obsessed markets in the country posted a 12.26% lift in impressions during tournament week.
On the format side, Street Furniture drove the bulk of the volume shift, with a 9.01% lift. Within that, transit shelters (+12.98%), bus benches (+11.83%), and junior posters (+11.85%) all outperformed. These are the formats that line the corridors between where people live and where they gather to watch games.
The Takeaway: Cultural moments don’t just increase OOH traffic. They change who’s in it. March Madness didn’t flood Beef O’Brady’s trade areas with more sports fans. It swapped one sports audience for another.
For planners, that distinction matters. If you’re targeting college sports energy, tournament week is the window. If you’re chasing pro sports audiences, those same corridors may actually soften. The StreetMetrics Intelligence Tool surfaces these shifts at the audience level so you can time your buys to the right fan, not just the right week.
Reach out to Michael@Streetmetrics.com to learn more.
StreetMetrics sponsored this post.