Buffalo Wild Wings has always been known to celebrate overtime, thanks to a now iconic campaign where bartenders would hit an “overtime button” to make crazy things happen on the court to cause overtime, and in turn, allow fans to stay at the bar longer. That legacy has continued today. Both on social media, where fans still tag the brand anytime a game goes into overtime, and in the restaurant, where the brand gives customers free wings if a game goes to overtime.

Buffalo Wild Wings came to us with a challenge: How can we take the brand’s equity in overtime and make it as big and as relevant as ever for the 2022 March Madness basketball tournament?

Every time a player sends a game to overtime, they not only create more time in the game, they create more great times at our bar and more time to sell more wings and beer. And now, during our biggest sales window of the year, we finally had a way to pay it back. The Overtime Deal is the first-ever NIL sponsorship exclusively for players who send a game into overtime and create more time for great times at our sports bar. While other brands went after the biggest stars, we shared the wealth with the players who gave us what we all wanted: more wings, more beer and more basketball.

For Buffalo Wild Wings to own overtime in a bigger way than ever, we had to tap into what was exciting and engaging March Madness fans this year. The biggest conversation in college sports was the introduction of Name Image Likeness (NIL) deals, which allow college athletes to be compensated by brands for the first time ever. For decades, college sports generated billions of dollars off the backs of athletes who never saw a penny. Today, 75% of fans agree these athletes deserve to be paid (Harris 2020). Buffalo Wild Wings wanted to make it happen with a first-to-market execution.

But we didn’t want to give out NIL deals for the sake of it. We came back to our overtime heritage. And to drive headlines, we used the overtime-sending players as our brand megaphones to spread our message to all the fans and media who were already following them closely.

This is the first year NIL deals for college athletes have been allowed. That, combined with the fact that most 19-year-old college players don’t have agents, means deals could take weeks to become official. But during the tournament, there were only 2-3 days between the player’s overtime-sending shot and their next game where we had a window to negotiate and where the story would still be relevant.

We turned this obstacle into an opportunity – creating a nimble legal/PR team to sign players and pitch them for coverage in nearly real time. This allowed our brand to capitalize on the biggest media moments of the tournament while fans were still going crazy over them. For example, Creighton’s Trey Alexander posted a Buffalo Wild Wings ad promoting our overtime deal less than 24 hours after making his overtime-sending shot. This speedy negotiation and PR approach helped us land 700+ media placements.

By locking deals with a 24- to 48-hour turnaround (typical deals can take 2-4 weeks), we drove more real-time impact. In total, we generated over 3.2 billion media impressions thanks to over 700 media placements. On top of that we generated a 300% increase in social mentions (compared to last March Madness) with 99.6% positive/neutral sentiment. But just as our brand skyrocketed, so did the athletes’ personal brands and cultural cachet. Nikki Baird of Belmont was a bench player, and suddenly had a national endorsement deal because of her OT-sending shot. 18-year-old Trey Alexander suddenly had famous rappers congratulating him on his deal. And St. Peter’s Doug Edert added 150K followers after we signed him. By tapping into the hype of March Madness’ biggest plays through the cultural relevance of NIL deals for college athletes, we established Buffalo Wild Wings as the home of overtime once again.