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Airnow Data points to continued strength of apps amid US March Madness basketball tournament

Published: 10:45 24 Mar 2021 EDT

Airnow Data points to continued strength of apps amid US March Madness basketball tournament
However, the overall download figures for all apps was down compared to the last time the NCAA basketball tournament was run, which was in 2019

Airnow Data, the app analyzing and tracking group, which helps customers understand their market, has pointed to the success of this year's ESPN’s Tournament Challenge app among basketball fans as underlining the growing importance of the app market.

It noted that there were more than half a million downloads of this particular app in the USA across Apple and Android devices in the seven days leading up to the start of NCAA event, known as March Madness on March 18, 2021, which is a single-elimination tournament played each spring.

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ESPN had almost 300,000 more downloads across devices than the next highest seed - the CBS Sports’ app - which had a total of 222,000 downloads, Airnow reported.

Airnow also noted that most people download the NCAA apps in the week before the tournament begins and that there were "huge increases" in downloads for the four apps - ESPN, CBS, NCAA and Yahoo - during this period.

The ESPN’s Tournament Challenge app, however, saw a 3,000% increase in Apple downloads, and a 2,000% increase in Android downloads.

That said, the overall download figures for all apps was down compared to the last time the NCAA basketball tournament was run, which was in 2019 (there wasn't an event in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic). This year there were 922,100 app downloads compared to 1.43 million in 2019.

This fall could be attributed to the nature of remote work, where running an office NCAA bracket challenge is more difficult than before, reported Airnow, adding that the challenge of beating co-workers and the holding of water cooler discussions about the games just wasn't there this year.

"These download numbers are tremendous, although it’s clear that the pandemic and related work situations have had an effect on the overall number of downloads,” said Tim Armes, Airnow Data's client services director in a press release.

"The continued strength of these apps each March goes to show how a strong app marketing strategy combined with a well-designed and easy-to-use interface can capture the attention of a fervent fanbase, especially during a championship tournament."

Airnow Data provides clients with six years’ worth of continually updated data categorized into the core products of App Intelligence, Keyword Intelligence, Market Intelligence and Usage Intelligence.

Together, this delivers valuable metrics to customers including Downloads, Revenue, DAUs (Daily Active Users), MAUs (Monthly Active Users), ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User) and Retention.

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