Raphael Stevens

A general view of a ‘March Madness’ logo is seen during practice before the First Round of the NCAA Basketball Tournament at Vivint Smart Home Arena on March 20, 2019 in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Patrick Smith | Getty Images

CBS Sports president Sean McManus called it heartbreaking. WarnerMedia boss Jeff Zucker said he was sad. And other executives felt similar when discussing the return of the college’s basketball’s money-making tournament.
About one year ago, the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) March Madness men’s tournament was canceled due to Covid-19, costing the NCAA media rights revenue and more losses on top of that when considering ticket sales. The NCAA says it had insurance for the 2019 tournament that paid out $270 million to absorb the blow. It has the same insurance in place for 2021.

It’s unlikely the NCAA will postpone the 2021 tournament, which starts Thursday, despite early Covid-19 outbreaks that have eliminated top programs, including Duke, from competing in conference play for a chance to get in. Teams are now set to spend up to four weeks in an Indianapolis bubble, the site of the 2021 tournament.
And again, networks embrace its return which McManus said will “look and feel different” but is vital to finances.
Here’s a look at what to expect from the tournament, by the numbers:

The $1 billion payout

Signage on display to commemorate March Madness and the 2021 NCAA Men’s Final Four as seen on March 9, 2021 in Indianapolis, IN.
Brian Spurlock | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

CBS and Turner Sports will once again collaborate for coverage of the event. McManus said the network would use 10 production crews, two more than the network used in 2019.
“It’s an event that is foundational to CBS Sports,” McManus said last week. “This year it’s going to be more challenging than ever to produce.”

But that challenge will need to be met, as $1 billion is on the line.
MediaRadar, an advertising data firm, estimates the 2019 NCAA March Madness tournament generated $1.18 billion in television ad spend for CBS and Turner Sports. Keep in mind the networks pay a little more than $800 million for the current rights package.
MediaRadar aggregates data from advertisers across a multitude of media channels, including TV and online. The firm said that amount was a 15% increase compared to the 2018 event.
“It is the most profitable playoffs in U.S. sports media rights deals,” said Dan Cohen, senior vice president of Octagon’s Global Media Rights Consulting division.
John Bogusz, CBS Network executive vice president of sports sales and marketing, said this year’s ad slots are nearly sold out with “a couple of units left in Final Four [game one] and a couple of units left in Final Four two and [the championship game].”
Bogusz said marketers are spending on sports programming, anticipating a reopening with vaccines becoming widely available by May. He said insurance and automotive are two sectors fueling ads for the 2021 tournament.
Car sales took a plunge when the pandemic struck, but early projections suggest sales could increase 10% this year. The restaurant industry is another area expected to grow after a sharp decline.
“It feels like most of the categories that were challenged during the pandemic, including movies and streaming services, will be back,” added Jon Diament, Turner Sports chief revenue officer.
Diament said March Madness would see ads for Paramount+ and HBO Max to balance out the loss of movie studios that could sit out.

20 million TV viewers could tune in

Usually, the NCAA Tournament does well on the viewership side, and networks missed out on that, too.
The NCAA said the March Madness Live streaming component had more than 100 million live streams in 2019, a 31% increase from the previous year. But despite cord-cutting, television still matters, and CBS will find out if the Covid-19 sports viewership decline will impact the Final Four.
In 2019, CBS drew about 19 million viewers for the championship game between Virginia and Texas Tech. That was a decline from the 2017 game it hosted featuring the University of North Carolina and Gonzaga, which attracted approximately 22 million. McManus said he isn’t concerned with ratings for this year’s tournament.
“I think if we get a good tournament, the ratings will be perfectly fine, and the advertisers will be satisfied with the amount of men and women who see their commercials,” he said.
Added Bogusz: “The ratings have been slightly down for college basketball this year, but this event is unlike any other. We’ll wait and see how the games perform, but we have set aside a little bit of inventory to take care of our advertisers if need be.”

Gonzaga guard Jalen Suggs (1) drives to the basket against BYU forward Matt Haarms (3) during the championship game of the men’s West Coast Conference basketball tournament between the BYU Cougars and the Gonzaga Bulldogs on March 9, 2021, at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas, NV.
Brian Rothmuller | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

47 million could place bets

The American Gaming Association estimates that more than 47 million people will place wagers on this year’s tournament, with 17.8 million individuals betting online, up 5.8 million in 2019.
And the odds are Gonzaga, as the school attempts to make history.
Gonzaga enters the tournament with a 26-0 record. It’s only the fifth time a team entered the NCAA Men’s Tournament undefeated since Indiana last did so in 1976 and won the tournament. Only seven schools went unbeaten and won the title.
Online sports betting company PointsBet took $2,850 on Gonzaga to win it all at +350 odds. If the Bulldogs win, that wager would have a total payout of $12,825.
BetMGM said Gonzaga has 26.7% of its handle – total amount wagered by bettors – around the NCAA tourney, followed by Illinois (11.8%). One of its biggest bets: A $2,755 wager on Illinois at +2,000. The payout is $55,100.
Fan Duel said two of its biggest bets is a $30,000 wager ($126,000 payout) for Baylor to win the tournament and a $20,000 bet ($500,000 payout) placed on West Virginia. More

An army health worker prepares a dose of Covishield, AstraZeneca/Oxford’s Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine made by India’s Serum Institute, at an army hospital in Colombo on January 29, 2021.
ishara S. Kodikara | AFP | Getty Images

LONDON — Two additional countries opted to suspend the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe on Tuesday, as regulators proceed with a new review into its side effects.
Sweden and Latvia announced on Tuesday morning that they were pausing their rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford. Portugal, Luxembourg and Slovenia took the decision to halt use of the shot on Monday night. Earlier in the day, Germany, France, Italy and Spain also joined the group of nations suspending use of the vaccine.

So far, 13 countries in the European Union have taken this decision, while a few others have stopped using individual batches of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Concerns over the widespread implications of the move have mounted in recent days, after Austria first decided to suspend the use of a specific batch of AstraZeneca shots last week, following the death of a 49-year old woman who had received this vaccine.
However, Europe’s health regulator has insisted that the “benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing Covid-19, with its associated risk of hospitalisation and death, outweigh the risks of side effects.”
In a statement Monday, the European Medicines Agency said it “will further review the information” and called an extraordinary meeting on the issue for Thursday.

Of course we need speed, not only for the economy but mainly for the health of our citizens, but at the same time we need certainty.

Paolo Gentiloni
EU commissioner for economic affairs

In addition, the World Health Organization has urged nations to continue their vaccination campaigns with the AstraZeneca and University of Oxford vaccine.

A number of EU countries have come out in support of the shot. In Belgium, Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke said on Monday that pausing its use would be “irresponsible”. While authorities in the Czech Republic have also said they will continue administering the vaccine.
Outside the EU, Canada, Australia and the U.K. have also rallied in support of AstraZeneca.

 So far, more than 6 million doses of the AstraZeneca shot have been administered in the EU, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
AstraZeneca said on Sunday that of the 17 million people vaccinated in the EU and the U.K., there have been 15 events of deep vein thrombosis and 22 instances of pulmonary embolism, as per data received until March 8.
“This is much lower than would be expected to occur naturally in a general population of this size and is similar across other licensed Covid-19 vaccines,” the firm said in a statement.
Concerns over the vaccine could put at risk the EU’s target of vaccinating 70% of the adult population by the end of the summer. The AstraZeneca vaccine has proved popular in Europe until now, because it is cheaper than its rivals and easier to store. This could then potentially delay the economic recovery in the region.
“Of course we need speed, not only for the economy but mainly for the health of our citizens, but at the same time we need certainty,” European Commission Paolo Gentiloni said at a press conference on Monday.
He added that the precautionary measures “are justified” and that the review being carried out by the EMA should provide “certainty to our EU citizens.” More

Shopping malls across the U.S. have been reeling as restaurant and retail tenants struggle to keep their doors open.
Data compiled by Coresight Research shows about a quarter of U.S. malls could close over the next three to five years, accelerating a trend that began before the pandemic.

Simon Property Group — the nation’s biggest mall owner — said in February that its fourth-quarter revenue dropped by 24% on a year-over-year basis to $1.1 billion.
However, some analysts think Simon — with its portfolio of A-rated malls and a healthy balance sheet — will benefit as distressed malls operated by its rivals close their doors. The company is also expected to see gains from new additions like hotels and luxury residences.
“Unfortunately there are a lot of centers that don’t fit that high profile and that have lost their competitive edge,” said Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb. “The thing about Simon is they’ve been really focused on maintaining it, and that’s both been through a combination of culling the lower productive centers as well as making sure that they keep investing in their top centers.”
Simon Property Group CEO David Simon said the company is also getting a lift as shoppers return to its malls and from tenants paying their rent on time after stores were able to reopen as pandemic restrictions eased.
Malls are a big tax driver for the communities they serve and employ lots of people locally. Watch the video above to find out more about the struggles U.S. malls face and what could become of them after the pandemic ends.

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Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci holds up the “15 Days to Slow the Spread” instruction as U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during a news briefing on the latest development of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. at the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House March 20, 2020 in Washington, DC.
Alex Wong | Getty Images

Tuesday marks one year since President Donald Trump announced his administration’s “15 days to slow the spread” campaign, asking Americans to stay home for about two weeks in an effort to contain the coronavirus.
The United States had confirmed just over 4,000 cases of the virus at the time as city and state officials rushed to implement restrictions to curb the outbreak. Countries were closing borders, the stock market was cratering and Trump, in what proved to be prescient remarks, acknowledged that the outbreak could extend beyond the summer.

Trump asked people to stay home, avoid gathering in groups, forgo discretionary travel and stop eating in food courts and bars for the next 15 days.
“If everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus and we’re going to have a big celebration all together,” Trump said at a White House press briefing on March 16, 2020 where he also announced the first vaccine candidate entering phase one clinical trials. “With several of weeks of focused action we can turn the tide and turn it quickly.”
A look back at the first coronavirus guidelines issued by the federal government demonstrate just how little was known at the time about the virus that’s sickened almost 30 million Americans and killed at least 535,000 in the U.S.

Arrows pointing outwards

The two largest failings of the guidance, former Baltimore health commissioner Dr. Leana Wen said, were that it failed to acknowledge that people who don’t have symptoms can spread the virus and that it didn’t say anything about wearing masks. Instead, that early guidance focused mostly on urging people who feel sick to stay home and for everyone to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people.
“There was so much we didn’t know about this disease at the time,” Wen said. “There were two key elements in our scientific knowledge that we didn’t fully understand. One was the degree of asymptomatic transmission, and two was the aerosols, how this is not just transmitted through people sneezing and coughing.”

Wen, who’s also an emergency physician and public health professor at George Washington University, noted that it wasn’t just politicians, but scientists too, who didn’t understand how to fight the virus. It wasn’t until early April that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization acknowledged that wearing a mask could help protect people, she said.

‘Opposite opinions’

In fact, at the end of February, top U.S. health officials were urging Americans not to buy masks in a bid to preserve supply for health-care providers.
“Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” then-U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said via Twitter on Feb. 29. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House Covid-19 Task Force coordinator under Trump, offered a glimpse last week into the early confusion over the science. In one of her first public appearances since leaving her role in the White House, Birx said there were doctors “from credible universities who came to the White House with these opposite opinions.”
“There were people with legitimate credentials and stellar careers that were feeding information, and I had never seen that before, and that was enormously difficult,” Birx said Thursday at a virtual symposium hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences and NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
It’s common for there to be legitimate disagreement within the scientific community, but perhaps never before has the debate played out so publicly or with such high stakes. Birx, who left the CDC last week and took a couple of private sector positions, said the discussion around early Covid policy was not so simple as science vs. politics. She added that little was known at the time about the virus and it was difficult to parse good science from bad.

‘Red flag’

Other public health specialists weren’t so forgiving of the White House’s early response to the pandemic. Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist and biodefense professor at George Mason University, said the “15 days to slow the spread” guidance demonstrated “a lack of awareness for managing outbreak response.” The initiative should not have been tied to a timeline, she said, but instead tied to a specific task like reducing daily new infections to a certain level.
“Simply put, 15 days is not enough to address so much of what we were facing in March 2020 and this plan really reveals an administration and national plan that was quite superficial in response,” Popescu said in an email to CNBC.
“Truly, for many of us in public health, this was a red flag — an indication that the administration had an unrealistic view of pandemic control measures and was not aware of the reality — a pandemic cannot be solved in 15 days and any strategy needs to include a serious amount of work resource, and personnel,” she added.

Testing

Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the former New York City health chief who led the Big Apple through the beginning of the pandemic when the state was seeing almost 1,000 daily deaths, told CNBC that it was already apparent by late February that the coronavirus had the potential to become catastrophic. She added that failings by the federal government to prioritize the testing of large parts of the population was one of the earliest missteps.
Some of the early tests the CDC developed and shipped were faulty, and only a limited group of Americans were granted access to them. White House Chief Medical Officer Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congressional lawmakers on March 12, just days before Trump’s 15-day guidance, that the U.S. wasn’t able to test as many people for the disease as other countries, calling it “a failing.”
Notably, the 15-day guidance made no mention of who should seek out testing and under what circumstances.
Barbot, now a professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a phone interview that the federal government’s testing woes put the city “behind the eight ball before the game even got started.”
“I think one of the biggest regrets that I have is that we didn’t have the testing that we needed to have,” Barbot said. “In retrospect, I do think in February there were a significant number of undetected infections taking place, and we were scrambling to try and identify them.”
She added that early on, officials should have acted more swiftly when cases were detected to prevent spread through the closure of businesses.
“There should’ve been earlier shutdowns,” Barbot said. “I think that’s where federal leadership fell short because on the national stage, we had the former president downplaying the importance, where on the front lines, we were seeing a different picture.” More

Walmart has hired Brandon Maxwell as creative director of its elevated fashion brands.
Walmart

Walmart wants to make a name for itself in fashion. It has tapped Brandon Maxwell, a designer who dresses celebrities from Lady Gaga to Michelle Obama, to raise its reputation.
Maxwell will oversee the discounter’s elevated brands, Scoop and Free Assembly, as creative director. The 36-year-old designer lives in New York City. He has been a judge on Bravo’s “Project Runway” and designs a luxury label sold by retailers like Neiman Marcus with items that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars apiece.

By working with Walmart, however, Maxwell said he can fit more budgets and reach more shoppers — including friends and family in his hometown of Longview, Texas. His first full collections will be available in spring 2022.
“I’m not a person who believes that fashion is just something on the surface. I believe it is a way to say to the world ‘This is who I am’ and that has power to it,” he told CNBC. “Being able to bring that to so many different people, and communities like mine, that I grew up in, to me always felt like the goal.”
Over the past several years, Walmart has expanded beyond clothing basics. The retailer has acquired established apparel brands, such as menswear retailer Bonobos, and launched its own. It added nearly 1,000 national names to its website, including Champion, Levi Strauss and Free People. And it struck a deal with ThredUp, a seller of secondhand apparel, shoes and accessories, to offer higher-end brands on a budget.
The retailer has launched four exclusive, elevated brands: Sofía Jeans, developed with actress Sofia Vergara; Eloquii Elements, a plus-sized women’s line inspired by acquired brand Eloquii; Free Assembly, a men’s and women’s private label for everyday fashion; and Scoop, a trend-oriented brand that Walmart revived.
Yet the world’s largest retailer by revenue is better known for low prices than high fashion. Its national footprint of more than 4,700 stores is largely concentrated in suburban areas and small towns rather than fashion hubs like New York City and Los Angeles. Much of its fashion-forward clothing can only be found online.

Denise Incandela, executive vice president of apparel and private brands for Walmart, said that is changing. After testing and selling private labels online, she said shoppers will see them at more brick-and-mortar locations. This spring, Sofia Jeans will be in 1,000 stores. Free Assembly will be in 500 stores, Scoop will be in 250 stores and Elloquii Elements will be 100 stores.
She said the retailer plans to sell more national brands at stores and make clothing displays more appealing with mannequins and creative imagery. It will also add a children’s line to Free Assembly and Scoop.
Walmart has 13 general merchandise private brands that have generated $1 billion or more in annual sales. Three of its private apparel lines are $2 billion brands. The company declined to name the brands.
Stacey Widlitz, a retail consultant and founder of SW Retail Advisors, said Walmart must prove to younger, style-conscious shoppers that its stores and website are a place to stock the closet, not just the fridge.
“The challenge for them is to really be able to shape in the consumer’s mind that they are becoming a fashion destination,” she said. “It’s not an overnight fix. It [Walmart] is food. It’s various basics. Walmart is not synonymous with fashion at this point.”
She said it trails behind Target, its smaller, big-box rival that established itself as a cheap chic retailer with sleek, remodeled stores and popular private labels.

Free Assembly Men’s Lifestyle
Source: Walmart

But she pointed to Walmart’s Free Assembly line, which launched last fall, as a sign of progress. She said Walmart needs to pick up the pace with private brands.
Walmart’s e-commerce sales in the U.S. grew 79% in the most recent fiscal year, as more shoppers shipped purchases to their homes or picked up online orders in the parking lot during the coronavirus pandemic. Its same-store sales grew by 8.6% compared with the prior fiscal year. The company did not break out how much of that sales growth came from general merchandise, such as apparel.
As some shopping mall staples like Macy’s and J.C. Penney have lost their footing, Walmart and other off-mall stores have an opportunity to gain credibility and market share across general merchandise categories like beauty and apparel.
Incandela said Walmart wants to be a convenient spot where consumers can find a wider range for their wardrobe, from T-shirts to eye-catching outfits. She said the retailer will continue to experiment with ways to make an impression, from showcasing apparel differently on its website to getting in front of customers on TikTok.
“We’re in the beginning of that journey,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of Bravo and CNBC. More

VRST is debuting Tuesday on both Dick’s Sporting Goods’ website and a standalone VRST.com, and will be rolled out to more than 400 Dick’s Sporting Goods locations across the country in the coming weeks.
Source: Dick’s Sporting Goods

Dick’s Sporting Goods is entering a hotly contested market for men’s athletic apparel with the launch of its own brand called VRST.
VRST debuts Tuesday on Dick’s website and a standalone VRST.com, and will roll out to more than 400 Dick’s stores in the coming weeks, the company said. Items in the line, which include everything from joggers and shorts to tees, quarter-zips, and hooded sweatshirts, retail anywhere from $30 to $120, putting it on the higher end of the market when it comes to price point.

Following the success that Dick’s has had with its Calia athleisure line for women, the company said it saw a blank space in its stores to have a more upscale and lifestyle-driven line for men. The line won’t compete directly with the sweat-wicking performance gear sold by Under Armour and Nike. Instead, it’s more similar to Lululemon.
Dick’s amped up private-label investments come, though, as big-name brands like Nike and Under Armour have pledged to sell more merchandise directly to consumers. Adidas announced earlier this month its direct-to-consumer vertical should make up 50% of net sales by 2025. While Dick’s still carries these brands, the pivot has put more pressure on wholesale retailers to have exclusive lines, like Calia and VRST, to drive traffic and sales.
In 2020, Dick’s rang up $1.3 billion in sales from its in-house brands. Total revenue was $9.58 billion. The company said its own brands outperformed national labels in the golf, fitness, outdoor equipment and team sports categories. Calia was the second-best women’s apparel brand falling only behind Nike last year, it said.

Filling the ‘white space’

VRST will be the second brand that Dick’s has launched with its own website. Calia was the first.
“When you see VRST, it will be a very different product assortment from when we have with our core vendor partners right now, and it is a white space,” Dick’s Chief Executive Lauren Hobart said earlier this month during an earnings call. “It covers a broad range of activities.”

“VRST will put us in a much stronger position to compete with similar offerings from premium apparel brands and specialty athletic apparel stores,” Hobart explained.

Items in the VRST line, which include everything from joggers, shorts, tees, quarter-zips, and hooded sweatshirts, retail anywhere from $30 to $120, putting it on the higher end of the market when it comes to price point.
Source: Dick’s Sporting Goods

Companies like Lululemon, Nike, Adidas and Under Armour have seen more momentum over the past 12 months than clothing brands focused on work wear and dressier items. And in turn, more traditional apparel brands and department store chains quickly shifted their merchandise and marketing to center around casual and comfort, creating more clamor in an already noisy category.

Activewear grabs market share

Prior to the pandemic, for example, Lululemon said it planned to double its men’s business in five years. Direct-to-consumer men’s athleisure brands like Rhone, Ten Thousand and Vuori have also been doubling down on marketing spending online to reach new customers. Even department store retailers Nordstrom and Kohl’s have put a renewed focus on activewear, in a bid to boost sales. Kohl’s efforts include an in-house line called FLX, which debuted earlier this month.
At the same time, there’s been enormous growth in the space.
Last year, men’s activewear gained market share to account for 45% of the total men’s apparel market, compared with 39% in 2019, according to data compiled by the consumer research firm NPD Group. Categories that helped drive dollars in the space included sweatpants, which were up 16% year over year, and sweatshirts, which rose 3%, it said.
But VRST isn’t a hurry-up solution to take advantage of a pandemic pop. It has been in the works for a few years, the company said.
“And obviously we’re maximizing the current momentum,” Nina Barjesteh, senior vice president of product development, said in an interview. “But more than anything, we continue to look at the long run, and make sure that we’re building products that you want to come back for more.”
Dick’s shares are up more than 190% over the past 12 months, as of market close on Monday. The company has a market cap of $7 billion. More