The Chainsmokers are headlining the first-ever “Bridge Show” between the two upcoming Final Four games for the NCAA Men’s National Basketball Tournament, a move that reflects a growing presence of music programming at the world’s biggest sporting events.
The Bridge Show will air on TBS and was first revealed during the Elite Eight broadcasts over the weekend, with Turner hoping the performance can appease more casual fans and add some more flair to the sort of programming limbo between the two semifinal matchups set to take place at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on Saturday.
The Chainsmokers’ show isn’t the only music programming for the tournament this year. There’s also the annual March Madness Festival that Turner Sports produces, which goes back over a decade. This year’s lineup though, is among the most robust it’s organized to date, with Post Malone, Twenty One Pilots and Zac Brown Band all listed as headliners, while Megan Moroney, Ravyn Lenae, Russell Dickerson and Dominic Fike are all on the bill as well.
CAA is the agency for the Chainsmokers as well as all three headlining festival acts at the festival this year. The agency didn’t give a specific figure but said the coming weekend now represents “eight figures” in deals, with Dave Aussenberg, a music sponsorship agent at CAA, calling it “a very lucrative weekend for the music department.”
“It’s an event our clients are asking us for now,” Aussenberg says of its musical roster with March Madness. “When the festival was first conceptualized, it was a nice-to-have complement to a weekend of basketball, but it’s growing so much. March Madness is growing leaps and bounds. It’s positioned before the NFL starts, before NBA playoffs, and before baseball is in full swing. There’s a wide audience of fans. People want entertainment, they want to make a weekend out of an event like this. “There’s a huge captive audience, you’ve got four-night hotel minimums, what are you supposed to do?”
The three-day festival itself is free and is subsidized by corporate sponsorships. CAA works closely with TNT Sports, as well as with the Solomon Group for March Madness’s music programming. In a statement, TNT Sports U.S. EVP and Chief Content Officer Craig Barry called their combined efforts “a true convergence of sport, music, and culture.”
“By bringing artists into the fabric of the tournament — not just as performers, but as creative partners — we’re creating a multi-platform experience that resonates far beyond the games themselves,” Barry said.
As the Solomon Group added: “The festival is an event that Final Four and music fans look forward to every year. Working creatively with CAA to line up artists and with TNT Sports to integrate on broadcasts during Final Four weekend, TNT Sports and Solomon Group produce a concert experience that matches the energy of the games, turning the whole weekend into an experience you can’t find anywhere else.”
Music is becoming a more prominent buy-in for additional programming for major sporting events across the country. The Super Bowl Halftime Show has only grown larger in its importance and footprint in recent years. Bad Bunny drew 128.2 million viewers for his show back in February, more than the game itself, and Kendrick Lamar put up 133.5 million the year before.
Now FIFA has been notably growing its musical presence as well. The first-ever World Cup Halftime Show will take place when the world’s most-watched sports tournament comes to the U.S. later this Summer, and Coldplay is helping select the talent for the halftime gig. Coldplay, along with Doja Cat, J Balvin and Tems, played FIFA’s Club World Cup Halftime Show as well last year.
Even outside of these larger televised events, Live Nation put a stake in the ground to capitalize on an influx of baseball fans that head to Arizona for spring training, putting on the Innings Festival in Tempe, Arizona since 2018. For musicians, playing these sporting events gets them in front of broader audiences that may come outside of their core fanbase. And in March Madness’s case, as the more regional music festival scene has shrunk some since COVID while the larger festivals have become more dominant, it provides more multi-day music for fans outside of those markets too.
“These events are drawing so many fans in different cities where they’re hosted,” Aussenberg says. “Including music is good for the ratings and good for the cities. And it’s a nice draw for artists, everyone’s there from the diehards to more casual fans.”
