The NCAA has filed a federal lawsuit against DraftKings, accusing the sports betting giant of using registered trademarks — most notably “March Madness” — without authorisation. Filed in an Indianapolis federal court, the complaint also seeks an emergency temporary restraining order designed to stop DraftKings before the Sweet 16 games get underway next week. Beyond the injunction, the NCAA is pursuing substantial financial restitution, including triple damages or DraftKings’ profits from the alleged infringement, plus legal fees.
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Why the NCAA is drawing a hard line
The 37-page complaint makes clear that this is about more than just branding. The NCAA has long maintained a strict anti-gambling stance, deliberately avoiding formal partnerships with sportsbooks — a position that sets it apart from the four major North American professional sports leagues, all of which have embraced betting partnerships. The organisation frequently calls on states to ban specific college wagers, including individual player prop bets.
Against that backdrop, seeing “March Madness” displayed prominently on a sports betting app is, in the NCAA’s view, deeply problematic. Officials argue it undermines their anti-gambling policies, erodes public trust, and risks creating the false impression of a formal commercial relationship between the NCAA and a sportsbook.
The lawsuit also targets confusingly similar variations of the trademark. DraftKings ran a survivor contest called “March Mania” — a phrase the NCAA argues is close enough to cause consumer confusion given the shared first word and near-identical connotations of the second.
A tournament worth billions in bets
The stakes are high partly because March Madness is one of the largest betting events in the US calendar. The American Gaming Association projected Americans would wager more than $3 billion on this year’s tournament — a scale of activity that makes the NCAA’s trademark all the more commercially valuable and, in its view, all the more worth protecting.
It is worth noting that the NCAA does work with the gambling industry in limited ways. Last April, it signed an exclusive data deal with Genius Sports, which supplies official postseason data to sportsbooks through 2032. But direct sportsbook partnerships remain firmly off the table.
DraftKings pushes back
DraftKings wasted little time responding. In a statement released the morning after the lawsuit was filed, the company defended its conduct on fair use grounds, arguing that “March Madness” is not being used as a brand identifier but simply as descriptive language to help users identify the relevant tournament games — consistent, it says, with how it references other competitions like the NIT. DraftKings also invoked First Amendment protections and expressed confidence that federal courts would move quickly to reject the injunction request.
As of Saturday morning, DraftKings had kept “March Madness” on its homepage menu. BetMGM also continued using the phrase. FanDuel, however, took a more cautious approach, quietly updating its menu wording to “NCAAB” by Saturday — having displayed “March Madness” just the day before.
The NCAA has not yet commented further on the pending proceedings.
