New ESPN Tournament Challenge App Now Available in the App Store and Google Play

Comprehensive Coverage of the 2015 NCAA Men’s & Women’s Basketball Tournament on ESPN.com, espnW.com, FiveThirtyEight.com and ESPN Insider

Brackets are back on ESPN.com with sign-ups now open for its popular free ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge presented by Acura, Allstate and Microsoft and ESPN Women’s Tournament Challenge presented by Capital One games. Fans will be able to research and strategize their brackets via in-depth coverage from ESPN.com’s college basketball experts and analysts, with news and predictor and analyzer tools exclusively available to ESPN Insider members. FiveThirtyEight will also release Nate Silver’s annual interactive men’s bracket and – for the first time – debut its Women’s NCAA Tournament projections.

ESPN Tournament Challenge 2015 & ESPN College Hoops Pick ‘Em

ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge and ESPN Women’s Tournament Challenge both return for their 18th seasons and will once again be free for entrants to submit up to 10 entries on ESPN.com.  At the end of the tournament, all Men’s Tournament Challenge entries that finish in the top 1% are entered in a random drawing to win a trip for two to the 2015 Maui Invitational and a $20,000 Best Buy Gift Card prize.  In the Women’s Tournament Challenge, entries that finish in the top 1% are entered in a random drawing for a $5,000 Best Buy Gift Card.  Entries for the Men’s Tournament Challenge game will be accepted until just prior to the tip-off of the Tournament’s first game on Thursday, March 19.  The Women’s Tournament Challenge will accept registration until just prior to tip-off of the first game on Friday, March 20. Guest celebrity brackets will feature a broad array of athletes, actors and ESPN personalities, including Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Jimmy Kimmel, The Muppets and many more.

Fans will be able keep track of their brackets while on the go with the newly updated and free-to-download ESPN Tournament Challenge app, now available for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android handsets and tablets in the App Store and Google Play. New features to the updated app include design enhancements, intuitive bracket designs and an all-new Bracketcast that dynamically tracks the impact of specific games on a bracket.

Last year, the Men’s Tournament Challenge game was again the most popular bracket game in the nation, with more than 11.01 million brackets, up 35.1 percent compared to the previous year and setting a new record. At the peak period, fans registered 11,983 brackets per minute (199 brackets per second), among those of which was a bracket from President Barack Obama.

Additionally, ESPN College Hoops Pick ‘Em – which challenges fans to predict the winner of each tournament matchup and earn bonus points if lower seeded teams win games – will also return to ESPN.com.  Entries that finish in the top 1% are entered in a random drawing for prizes.

Comprehensive Coverage Across ESPN Digital Platforms

ESPN.com will provide complete coverage of the men’s tournament from Selection Sunday through the Final Four. The lineup of experts and analysts includes Andrea Adelson, Brian Bennett, Eamonn Brennan, C.L. Brown, Chantel Jennings, Andy Katz, Joe Lunardi, Myron Medcalf, Ian O’Connor,  Dana O’Neil, Kevin Pelton,  Mitch Sherman and Austin Ward, as well as ESPN Insiders Jay Bilas, Jeff Goodman and John Gasaway. Collectively, they will break down the brackets and provide analysis, commentary and features.  Additionally, ESPN.com’s Basketball Power Index (BPI) will be available for fans to reference the latest power rankings by team to assist in their bracket picks.

espnW.com will also provide news, analysis and commentary throughout the women’s tournament, from Selection Monday through the Women’s Final Four in Tampa, FL. Columnists will provide live coverage of each round of games from coast to coast, with regular video highlights of the matchups. Other plans include contributions from ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo, the continued coverage of ESPN’s 3 to See and Need to Know initiatives, stats, analysis and stories on other players to watch. Tourney Snapshots, which includes team- and fan-submitted social media photos and video with behind-the-scenes access to teams, players and coaches, will return for the third consecutive season.

FiveThirtyEight also unveiled its annual interactive bracket, which calculates the probability of each team’s chances of advancing through the rounds of the tournament. On Tuesday, March 17, the website will debut its first-ever Women’s NCAA Tournament projections. The brackets, based on Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver’s model, incorporate factors such as travel distance, injuries and regular season records.

Additionally, FiveThirtyEight will deliver several data-driven stories tied to both tournaments throughout the week, including:

• A full breakdown of the men’s and women’s tournament by editor-in-chief Nate Silver, including a closer look at each region, the favorite teams that are most likely to fall and the underdogs who are likely to rise.
• A look into the recent phenomenon of five-seeds dropping like flies in the men’s tournament, and whether the phenomenon is a statistically significant one, by Ben Morris (senior writer).
• A piece by Andrew Flowers (quantitative editor) comparing the number of upsets in the men’s tournament to the number in the regular season.
• Carl Bialik (news writer) breaks down the University of Connecticut women’s team unbelievable dominance over nearly every opponent they’ve faced this year. They’ve blown them all out — what does this mean for their tournament?

ESPN Insider will also include a number of additional exclusive features before, during and after the tournament to help break down who gets off the bubble, who is most likely to be this year’s Cinderella and who will be the breakout stars of the tournament.  They include:

• Bilas Bracket: ESPN’s Jay Bilas provides his take on how the tournament will shake out with a comprehensive look at every round;
• Giant Killers: Insider’s signature analytics model returns for its 10th year of picking the upsets using key statistical markers and team comparisons;
• Joe Lunardi’s Team Previews: Team-by-team breakdowns of all 68 teams in the field by a team led by ESPN’s Bracketologist;

• Selection Night Winners and Losers: Jeff Goodman shares his analysis of bracket winners and losers, plus Insider information looking ahead key matchups in the Round of 32 and beyond;
• Round-by-Round Observations: Dan Dakich offers his analysis and bold proclamations for every round.

• Tournament Truths: Hoops stat guru John Gasaway goes inside the numbers before and after every round of the tournament;
• College Basketball Experts Blog: Tips and insight from Fran Fraschilla and Seth Greenberg before, during and after the big dance;

Additional predictor and analyzer tools available exclusively for ESPN Insider members – and all accessible online and on the mobile Web for the first time – include:

• Bracket Predictor – Tournament Edition: A “wizard” style interface leading through the process of making picks for a bracket, giving users predictions and other relevant information for every bracket matchup. Once the user completes all bracket picks in Bracket Predictor, the user will be presented with the option to transmit the completed bracket to ESPN Tournament Challenge
• Game Predictor: Provides users with predictions and statistical information for actual or hypothetical basketball matchups within the ESPN Tournament Challenge page, giving users tips and guidance for every matchup without leaving the screen;
• Bracket Analyzer: Easily import brackets from ESPN’s Tournament Challenge and receive an analysis that demonstrates and predicts areas of possible improvement to better the chances for victory.  The computer generated report includes round-by-round survival odds for all of a user’s game winner picks, the expected number of user picks to be correct, a high level analysis of the risk level of the user’s picks and recommendations for changing certain picks;
• PickCenter: Offers fans a complete breakdown of each and every game complete with predictions, simulations, odds analysis, line moves, significant injuries and more.
• Joe Lunardi Bracket Predictions: A tool that presents a variety of predictions and odds generated by Team Rankings and based on Lunardi’s projected 2015 tournament bracket, as published in the “Bracketology” section of ESPN.com.

-30-