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24.4% of brackets predicted Baylor vs. Notre Dame in ESPN Women’s Tournament Challenge

ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge

Brackets in ESPN.com’s Men’s Tournament Challenge presented by State Farm and Infiniti USA revealed that 35.1% of 6.45 million brackets correctly picked Kentucky to win the title – larger than the 4.7% out of 5.9 million brackets that picked Connecticut last year.  Only 6.2% picked the Jayhawks to win, the fifth most popular pick.

All Men’s Tournament Challenge brackets that finished in the top 1% are entered in a random drawing for the $10,000 Best Buy Gift Card prize*.  A full round-by-round breakdown of picks can be found under “Who Picked Whom” on ESPN.com, listing the percentage of participants who selected each team to win in each respective round.

The 6.45 million brackets in Men’s Tournament Challenge this year surpassed last year’s record of 5.9 million brackets by 8.9 percent.  At the peak period, fans registered 6,340 brackets per minute (105 brackets per second). Among them was President Barack Obama, who correctly had Kentucky in the championship game, but picked North Carolina to win it all.  He finished in the 63.6th percentile with a final rank of 2,347,421 in the Men’s Tournament.

ESPN Women’s Tournament Challenge

24.4% of brackets in ESPN.com’s Women’s Tournament Challenge chose a Baylor vs. Notre Dame championship game, the second most popular title game scenario after Baylor vs. Connecticut.  An analysis of all women’s brackets reveals:

• 55.2% of all brackets picked Baylor to win the Championship, by far the most popular pick;
• 8.2% predicted Notre Dame to win the title, the third most popular pick;
• Through the Final Four, President Obama women’s bracket currently sits in the 73.5th percentile.

For a full round-by-round breakdown of picks, visit the Women’s “Who Picked Whom” page on ESPN.com.  Entries that finish in the top 1% are entered in a random drawing for a $5,000 Best Buy Gift Card.

2012 NCAA College Basketball Tournament on ESPN.com and ESPN Mobile

Across ESPN digital platforms – including ESPN.com, the ESPN mobile Web site, ScoreCenter and Bracket Bound app, ESPN saw an average minute audience of 57,000 people consuming college basketball content alone on one of ESPN’s digital platforms at any given minute of the day on  Saturday and Monday (through the Final Four and Championship).  Additionally, average visits to the Tournament Challenge section on ESPN.com was up 94% compared to last year.  The College Basketball section on the ESPN mobile Web also logged 1.2 million daily unique visitors, up 13%.

* Pending review of entries for eligibility and authentication.

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