Data: E-commerce traffic rose nationwide during 'March Madness'
“March Madness” provided online retailers and brands a major boost in traffic during the duration of the tournament.
Six weeks of data from connected commerce operations platform Rithum over the course of the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament showed that 31 of 32 states with a college team in the tournament had online shopping rates above their baseline on game days.
Also, in all four matchups in the tournament's "Elite Eight" round, the state that shopped more per capita in the six weeks analyzed was the state whose team won. Connecticut out-shopped North Carolina, Michigan out-shopped Tennessee, Illinois out-shopped Iowa and Arizona out-shopped Indiana.
Rithum noted that orders were trending upward across the whole six-week period for every state, tournament or not, attributing some of the gains to seasonal momentum. But the day-specific spikes – 40% above average on the days of the tournament's "Sweet 16" round, for example – suggest something else happening on top of the trend. The correlation between game days and order volume is too consistent, across too many states, said Rithum.
Findings from Rithum’s e-commerce data include the following:
•10 of the top 11 highest-shopping days of the last six weeks in Connecticut were during the tournament, pointing to sustained lift tied to fan engagement following the UConn Huskies’ "Final Four" semifinal round run – not just a single spike.
•On the day UConn defeated Duke in the Elite Eight, e-commerce orders in Connecticut hit the state’s highest single shopping day across Rithum’s analyzed six-week window. That Sunday came in 12% above the next-highest volume shopping day, and 32% above a typical Sunday.
•On the opening game day (March 19), California saw a 38% e-commerce spike over its average Thursday order rate – the largest same-day increase of any state with more than 10 million residents, despite Saint Mary’s (located in Moraga, Calif.) ultimately losing. Texas was the only other large state that approached that level of lift that day, with e-commerce orders rising 34% above its average Thursday baseline.
[READ MORE: Amazon adding temporary surcharge on sellers starting April 17]
Rithum said that its college basketball e-commerce findings can inform how retailers and brands promote ahead of the large sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup, which kicks off June 11, spanning 16 cities across the US, Canada and Mexico for 39 days.
“The brands that follow a retail calendar alone will miss the revenue that cultural moments create,” noted Rithum. “The brands with the channel infrastructure, inventory visibility, and pricing flexibility to move when consumers are paying attention are the ones who capture it.”
Rithum’s data was sourced from its commerce platform across 8.2 million unique products and more than 20,000 suppliers. Order rates are normalized to per 100,000 residents to enable state-by-state comparison.
