Arroe Collins All Level Sports...

Clendon Ross from Retail Me Not

March Madness fans are ready to spend some serious money! A recent survey from RetailMeNot, and conducted by Kelton Global, found that Americans who are willing to spend money on March Madness–related expenses said they would spend on average $211, up $20 from last year. On average, men are willing to spend almost $100 more than women ($248 vs. $155).

Brackets may be one of the biggest expenses. Fans who say they would be willing to spend money on bracket entries say they would spend on average $90, with more than a third (35%) spending $100 or more*.

Money isn’t the only thing basketball fans are willing to put on the line. Bosses beware! Dedicated fans are willing to ditch work to watch the Big Dance:
•More than 1 in 5 (21%) have watched the tournament while at work
•Over 1 in 10 (11%) have planned a vacation day just to watch the games
•Close to 1 in 10 (8%) have gone as far as calling in sick to work
Watching the games is almost as important as the food served. The most requested snacks at March Madness parties are pizza (67%), followed by chips and dip (63%), nachos (49%) and Buffalo wings (47%)*.

Winning doesn’t necessarily mean splurging
Forty-three percent of bracket winners plan to put their earnings into their savings account. However, not all winners are as conscientious: More than 1 in 4 (27%) are planning to treat themselves to a nice dinner, followed by taking a trip (20%) and purchasing an electronic device (16%).

Want in on the action, but basketball isn’t your thing? Don’t worry! Almost 1 in 6 (16%) consumers have pretended to know about the games, while close to 1 in 10 (8%) have gotten a friend to fill out their bracket, followed by automating their bracket online (7%).

Can’t decide on a team to root for? Americans prefer to pick a team based on its location (34%), followed by their alma mater (16%), a specific player on the team (10%) and uniform colors (9%).*

Clendon Ross spends his days keeping RetailMeNot's community of coupon contributors happy and the rest of his time following college sports. A sports commentator in his spare time, he's always ready to offer an opinion. His desk is a frequent stop for those who want to discuss the latest sports news, particularly when it’s about his beloved Texas Longhorns, Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees or U.S. National Soccer Team. He owns InsideTexas.com, an online publication that covers University of Texas athletics. He frequently appears on TV to talk about the Longhorns and college sports in general.

ABOUT RETAILMENOT, INC.
RetailMeNot, Inc. (http://www.retailmenot.com/corp/) is a leading digital savings destination connecting consumers with retailers, restaurants and brands, both online and in-store. The company enables consumers across the globe to find hundreds of thousands of digital offers to save money while they shop or dine out. During the 12 months ended December 31, 2015, RetailMeNot, Inc. experienced over 718 million visits to its websites. It also averaged 23.2 million mobile unique visitors per month during the three months ended December 31, 2015. RetailMeNot, Inc. estimates that approximately $4.8 billion in retailer sales were attributable to consumer transactions from paid digital offers in its marketplace in 2015, more than $600 million of which were attributable to its in-store solution. The RetailMeNot, Inc. portfolio of websites and mobile applications includes RetailMeNot.com in the United States; RetailMeNot.ca in Canada; VoucherCodes.co.uk in the United Kingdom; retailmenot.de in Germany; Actiepagina.nl in the Netherlands; ma-reduc.com and Poulpeo.com in France; and Deals2Buy.com in North America. RetailMeNot, Inc. is listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker...

Duration:: 12m
Broadcast on:: 15 Mar 2016
Audio Format:: other

Breaking news coming in from Bet365, where every nail biting overtime win, breakaway, pick six, three point shot, underdog win, buzzer beater, shoot out, walk off, and absolutely every play in between is amazing. From football to basketball and hockey to baseball, whatever the moment, it's never ordinary at Bet365. Gambling problem? Call or text 1-800-Gambler. 21 plus only must be physically located in Colorado. My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big row as man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laughing at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn, you'll be able to reach people who do. Get a $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to linkedin.com/results to claim your credit. That's linkedin.com/results. Terms and conditions apply. Linkedin, the place to be to be. Hey, it's Arrow on iHeartRadio. March Madness fans are ready to spend some serious money over the next few weeks. A recent survey from RetailMeNot conducted by Kelton Global found that Americans are willing to spend money on March Madness related expenses. We're not talking about just the jerseys and the food. Oh, this goes really deep. We are unplugged and totally uncut with sports commentator and the community manager for RetailMeNot, Mr. Clinton Ross. Welcome to the Carolina's. This is where college basketball lives, dude. Absolutely. I always have to remind people, Steph Curry played here. He's one of the greatest basketball players of all time. It was here that he started. Isn't it amazing that now there's somebody that we can start talking about in the same breath as Michael Jordan? Isn't that the reason why people invest so much money and stuff into these college games, because they all believe that there's a future for every one of these kids? You know, it's funny. Some of these teams have great potential future NBAers on the team. But you know what? There's also tons of teams in this tournament that don't have that. I think that's one of the beauties of the tournament. There's teams like Stony Brook or Florida Gulf Coast that have a chance to win just like North Carolina or just like Duke. I keep waiting for Montana to somehow appear on that picture. Even if they make it to the Sweet 16, I would be okay. That'd be exciting. So you come at a really good time, because this morning, all over the news was how people were putting $6 billion into their brackets this year. That's a lot of money, man. It is a lot of money. And the retell me not March Madness survey found that people on average, if they're going to spend money on brackets, they're going to spend 90 bucks. I mean, that's a significant amount. That's a little rich for my blood. But obviously, there are people out there that are spending significant amount of money on their brackets, just as you pointed out. Is it a guy thing or the girl starting to get involved in all of this too? You know, it's both. As you would expect, guys spend more money on March Madness related expenses. On average, people spend $211. Men spend a little bit more $250. But women still spend $150 on average if they're going to spend on March Madness expenses. So it's both. You don't have to be a die hard sports fan to participate in the NCAA basketball tournament and the bracket fun. The coolest thing about about March Madness, especially this time of years, because you have so many people that are running for political offices, even during a non-presidential year. But you start seeing everybody's team colors outside their house. And it just adds fun, because I'll also go, if they're from Notre Dame or something, it's like, it's you're right. It just brings out the rivalry. And you know, I'm a Texas guy. So Texas and Texas A&M may play in the second round of the tournament. That would be huge. You know, Duke has, you know, they may run into North Carolina if they get that far or North Carolina into Duke. You know, there's just, it's so fun when those rivalries happen in the postseason because it's a win-or-go-home situation. And that is the fun and the terror of those kind of games. There's got to be somewhere in business offices around where people are always trying to tap into how is it the NCAA is able to get all of this energy into this month and we can barely keep it a week. Well, you're right. And that's what we found in the, in the retail, I mean, March Madness survey. We found that the work productivity suffers significantly. And it suffers because people are so into the tournament. They're going to, they're going to watch while they're at work. They're going to call in sick. They're going to take vacation days. So yeah, the NCAA is definitely tapped into something here. But you know, it's just so exciting that those, particularly the first couple of days of the tournament, you know, there's 48 games over the first weekend of the tournament. And as a sports fan, that's like Christmas. One of the things that we do here at the radio station is that we know that people are going to hit a Panera bread or a sports store or something like that and go watch a game. So what we do is we put it up here. And then this way we provide a safe environment for our employees. But you know what, I actually think it's kind of something that can bring employees together. You know, again, it doesn't have to be something that just the sports fans in an office. It can be everybody. And as we pointed out earlier, women spend money on this just like men do. They follow it. They're excited about it. So yeah, it can be something that brings an office together. And yeah, you may as well just tap into it in the office, throw it up on the screens there and let people watch. How much does big business depend on this? Because I mean, we're in that dry spell now Valentine's Day is over. And really, what's the next big holiday summer? Yeah, there's not a whole lot coming up right now back to school. It's still several months away. So yeah, I mean, this is definitely something that retailers rely on. You think about the spending that people are the things that people spend money on for this. We're talking about TVs as a big one, party supplies, apparel, travel. All of those things are very important and can pump the money into companies. And we at RetailMeNot have great offers that people can save money on those types of things and can check those out. See, and where do they go? They just go right to the website to find those things out? Yeah, absolutely. You can go to the website or another great way. And this is for people on the move now, which we all are, right? We have our cellular phones or our mobile phones with us all the time. There's the free RetailMeNot app which gets your savings while you're on the go. See, that's what's cool about you guys is that you're just as connected as the NCAA. No matter where you are, what time of year it is, you guys have always got something going on. Absolutely. You can watch the games on your phone and you can save money when you're in the store all while you're out and about. Great deal. Do you find yourself though going, OK, Carolina's got to win this thing because we know that if Carolina wins, there's going to be more money spent. Do you guys find yourself playing that kind of a game too? You know, that's interesting. I think the bigger teams like Carolina, like a Kansas, like a Duke, they have such large fan bases that definitely if they go far in the tournament, their fans are going to spend a lot of money. They're going to spend it on apparel, parties, all the things we mentioned, TVs, but also travel. So yeah, absolutely. I think the bigger the team that wins, the more fans that can be involved in spending money. But also, there's this great excitement that happens if it's an underdog. And we all know that as fans that watch the tournament, you you root for those underdogs in almost every situation unless you would be rooting against your own alma mater. So there's a little bit. There's something to it that there's also a lot of interest when an underdog makes it all the way to the final four. So now what what happens after the tournament? How at retail, at retail, me not a couple of weeks afterwards, people are still buying. People are still talking about it because it can't be just the month of March. This thing has to stretch way up into April 2. Well, as you know, college sports is a year round thing. And college football is huge as well. So yeah, it's definitely a year round thing. But there's definitely a concentration of interest around March. And again, because it pulls in people that aren't sports fans, it's something that everybody can be excited about and want to spend money about. And that's exactly what our survey found. One of the things that always gets me about when we have big things like this going on for a month, we eat horrible, worse than the holidays. And I can't imagine what we're doing to our health days. Do you have anything on that? Well, I'll tell you this, the survey found that the most popular items are not exactly healthy. We're talking pizza. We're talking nachos. We're talking wings. You know, we we love those things and we're probably going to gorge on them over the next few weeks. So when it comes to playing the game, do the players really invest in their fans as well? Have you found out anything on that? We didn't. We haven't surveyed that. But I'll tell you this, just from being a college sports fan and somebody that follows it extremely closely, I think that absolutely happens. The college players feed on their fans. And yeah, I think that's a huge bit of the passion that goes into college basketball. It's different than the NBA. You know, those guys are pros and they're getting paid for being out there in the NBA in college. You know, they're they're not getting paid and they're a lot of what they're doing. It's just for for the love of school and the love of the game. And in the tournament, it's a great example. A lot of these guys are not going, but the vast, vast majority of these guys are not going pro. They're just going to play basketball because they love it and they're passionate about it and they feed off the fan's fashion. People like me on iHeartRadio need to understand that when you go to RetailMeNot.com, I mean, there's coupons here, 50% off pizzas online. You can and you've got workstations here from Dell. You've got Coles. You've got a Vita. This really is a shopping place, dude. Yeah, absolutely. And the beauty of it is you can save on all kinds of different items and in all kinds of different ways. You can save, as you mentioned, we've got coupons, but you can also get discounted gift cards. You can get digital rebates. There's just tons of ways to save. So it doesn't matter what you're buying, whether it's the pizza, which we've got a great Papa John deal on the site right now, or if you're going to buy a TV, you can find a good deal on it at RetailMeNot. Papa John's 25% off the entire regular price menu. You've got that right there. You've got things on there for GoDaddy. Look, I mean, if somebody's sitting in their office right now and they're trying to make it look like they're working, GoDaddy, 93% off their domain. Why watch the game when I can sit here and look at what you guys are doing on RetailMeNot? Hey, you need to multitask. Do what? So what do you do when the games are all over then? Do you take up curling? I mean, what's going on? Hey, it's sports a year round, although you're right. There's a little bit of a lull over the next few months. Hey, there's always major league baseball, right? Yeah. Plus, we have the summer game. So I hope to talk with you later on this summer and find out what kind of research you guys are doing on that since it's going to be down in Brazil. Sounds great. I think I'd like to ask the boss for a trip down there. Yeah, if we just can break free of the mosquitoes, hey, but you know what? I can go on your website and I'll bet you there's something here I can buy that'll protect me from those mosquitoes. I bet you're absolutely right. Breaking news coming in from Bet365, where every nail biting overtime win, breakaway, pick six, three point shot, underdog win, buzzer beater, shoot out, lock off, and absolutely every play in between is amazing. 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