"Expanding the Division I Men's and Women's Basketball Championships is the right decision for the student-athletes and programs that will now have access to the greatest events in college sports," said Tim Sands, the Board of Directors chair and Virginia Tech president via his press release."As NCAA leaders, we are especially excited to provide additional, highly competitive games for fans who look forward to March Madness every year."
The expansion will come in the first round, which will now feature 12 games instead of four. They will still occur on Tuesday and Wednesday for the men's tournament, and Wednesday and Thursday for the women's competition.
Also confirmed on Thursday, the NCAA mentioned that the deal made them able to "award more than $131 million in new revenue distributions to member schools participating in the basketball tournaments over the remaining six years of the NCAA's broadcast agreements."
In order to achieve that revenue, the NCAA claimed that the rights agreement will increase by $50 million per year for the next six years, opening a "new, previously restricted product categories for the NCAA Corporate Champions and Partners Program, including beer, wine, spirits, and hard seltzer, and allows for expanded in-game advertising opportunities during the linear and streaming coverage of the tournaments."
First Four games, now renamed the Opening Round, will still take place in Dayton, OH, with the other venue to be used not yet confirmed. On the women's side, the games in this round are played at on-campus sites.
Playing in the Opening Round will be the 12 lowest ranked automatic qualifiers along with 12 lower seeded at-large teams.
This is the first expansion of the NCAA tournamnet since 2011, when the the number of participants increased from 65 to 68. Before that, the field was at 64 or 65 teams since 1985.