The NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports have entered into a multiyear partnership with Google Cloud to use its technology, starting with the current D-1 basketball season. Google Cloud as part of the deal will serve as the official cloud provider of the NCAA. Google Cloud's technology will also be implemented during March Madness (NCAA). FORBES' Alex Konrad noted the partnership with Google "happened after the NCAA, Turner Sports and CBS Sports ... met with the usual suspects in cloud computing such as market leader Amazon Web Services and Microsoft as well as Google before accepting Google’s bid." A source said that a "key factor" in the deal is that the net flow of cash will go towards the joint venture. Google will "benefit from the partnership in exposure" during NCAA Tournament games and "through the access to its analytics tools." One such example could be a "Google-branded tool to provide team data to fans filling out official tournament brackets online, or the use of Google data during live broadcasts, much as IBM does during the U.S. Open tennis tournament." The NCAA will "use Google’s analytics and machine learning tools such as BigQuery and Cloud ML internally" to "improve the tournament selection process and to improve the fairness of team seeding" (FORBES.com, 12/19). The partnership includes a "full media plan, with custom branded content that will run during games and on digital platforms" (ADWEEK.com, 12/19).
