At Bing, we’re constantly looking for ways to help people find the information they need to make confident decisions. From the 2014 midterm elections, to the NFL season, and more recently, the Grammy’s and Oscars, Bing has taken on some exciting moments with these major events. With the arrival of spring, we have one thing on our minds: March Madness.
Many of us here at Bing are gearing up to fill out our March Madness brackets and we know we aren’t alone. But when it comes to bracket building, we’re hearing that people approach it in all kinds of ways. In fact, 62% of people simply trust their gut feeling when building their bracket, according to a YouGov survey commissioned by Bing. So what is the secret to a perfect bracket and how can Bing help casual fans find data, have fun, and look like sports analysts? Bing is teaming up with the NCAA as the official bracket data partner of the tournament to help find out.
As part of this partnership, NCAA has pulled 10 years of raw historical data about teams, tournaments, win loss ratio, home vs. away stats, etc. and provided it to Microsoft’s Walter Sun, principal applied science manager, to analyze and review. After culling through the information, running through Bing’s algorithms and leveraging machine learning, Walter and his team have been able to identify key patterns over the years that contribute to a team’s success.
The results of this data review and NCAA partnership will be showcased following Selection Sunday™ with Bing’s new NCAA bracket building tool designed to help fans complete their brackets.
“We’re pleased to add Bing and its parent company Microsoft to our NCAA Corporate Partner Program as the official bracket data partner of the NCAA,” said Keith Martin, NCAA managing director of marketing and broadcast alliances. “Bing’s search services will allow fans to have some fun as they access data for their bracket selections. This new technology provides information that allows our fans to be more analytical after Selection Sunday.”
“We are thrilled to welcome Bing to the NCAA Corporate Partner family,” said Will Funk, SVP of sponsorship integration and business development, Turner Sports Ad Sales. “Their robust technology will undoubtedly provide basketball fans everywhere with a great new tool as they look to fill out their NCAA tournament brackets.”
Tune into CBS’s March 15th broadcast and then get ready to experience the excitement of March Madness with Bing.
– The Bing Team