The NCAA lost its first round. A federal judge denied the organization's request for a temporary restraining order that would have barred DraftKings from using "March Madness" and related tournament branding to promote sports betting on its platform.
The Hill reported that Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, found that the NCAA failed to demonstrate how DraftKings' use of terms like "March Madness," "Final Four," "Elite Eight," and "Sweet Sixteen" would cause irreparable harm.
The NCAA filed its lawsuit on March 20, accusing DraftKings of using its trademarks without permission.
The ruling doesn't end the legal fight. Judge Pratt left the door open for the NCAA to continue pressing its case:
"With further discovery the NCAA may be able to show they are entitled to a preliminary or permanent injunction, and those claims remain pending."
But for now, DraftKings keeps the language, and the NCAA walks away empty-handed from a battle it chose to pick at the worst possible time.
The NCAA claims it first adopted its tournament trademarks in the 1980s, long before legal sports betting existed in most of the country.
The organization's argument centers on consumer confusion, contending that DraftKings' use of the branding creates the impression of a formal relationship between the NCAA and the gambling industry.
The NCAA put it bluntly in its filing:
"When consumers encounter the NCAA Basketball Marks in connection with DraftKings' gambling services, they are likely to perceive an affiliation between the NCAA and the gambling industry, thereby distorting the NCAA's identity and undermining decades of deliberate efforts to promote policies, programs, and public messaging designed to separate collegiate athletics from commercial gambling."
There's a certain irony in an organization presiding over a tournament that generates billions in revenue pleading that gambling might "distort" its identity. The NCAA has spent decades monetizing March Madness through television deals and corporate sponsorships.
The idea that a sports betting company referencing the tournament by its commonly known name somehow crosses a line the NCAA hasn't already blurred requires a generous reading of the organization's own history.
DraftKings mounted a straightforward defense: none of this is new. In a court filing, DraftKings argued that it has used "March Madness" and other tournament terms to identify NCAA tournament events since 2021. The company also pointed out something the NCAA probably wished it hadn't:
"The parties have corresponded for years about trademark issues, but the NCAA never once complained about anything other than 'March Mania' until a few weeks ago."
That timeline matters. If DraftKings has been openly using these terms for years and the NCAA only raised objections weeks before filing suit, the urgency required to justify a temporary restraining order starts to evaporate. Courts tend to notice when plaintiffs claiming irreparable harm waited years to sound the alarm.
This lawsuit lands against a backdrop that makes the NCAA's moral positioning harder to maintain. According to the American Gaming Association, Americans will legally wager $3.3 billion on the NCAA men's and women's Division I basketball tournaments this year.
Sports betting is now legal in a majority of states and Washington, D.C., though it remains illegal in a dozen states including California, Texas, Utah, and Hawaii.
The NCAA isn't fighting the existence of sports betting. It can't. That war ended when the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban in 2018 and state after state legalized the industry. What the NCAA is fighting for is control over the language surrounding its product, which is a legitimate trademark concern in the abstract but a harder sell when:
The NCAA wants to maintain a firewall between its brand and gambling while benefiting from a cultural moment that gambling has supercharged. That's not a legal argument. It's a branding wish.
Judge Pratt's ruling keeps the broader case alive. The NCAA can still pursue a preliminary or permanent injunction as discovery proceeds, and the trademark questions at the heart of this dispute are genuine legal issues that deserve resolution.
But the denial of the restraining order signals that the NCAA faces an uphill climb in convincing the court that emergency intervention was warranted.
For conservatives who have watched the NCAA moralize about amateurism, equity, and institutional purity for decades while running one of the most lucrative sports enterprises on the planet, this lawsuit fits a familiar pattern. An institution that refuses to acknowledge what it has become, fighting to preserve an image that no longer exists.
The NCAA built March Madness into a cultural phenomenon. It shouldn't be surprised that the culture noticed.
