• by Danielle Oster , March 24, 2025

There are no guarantees in NCAA basketball’s famously hard-to-predict March Madness tournament. No one has ever filled out a perfect bracket predicting the results of the men’s or women’s basketball tournament, according to the NCAA, which, on a post on its website, estimates the odds of a perfect bracket at around 1 in 120.2 billion.

That makes the tournament a seemingly ideal platform for longtime tournament sponsor AT&T’s “AT&T Guarantee” campaign, which contrasts the brand’s recently introduced network reliability and customer care pledge with the things in life that do not come with a guarantee. A sponsor of NCAA men’s and women’s Mach Madness basketball, and the Final Four, for over 20 years, AT&T teamed up with a host of NBA, men’s college basketball, and women’s college basketball stars for its March Madness campaign.

“Villanova BFFs” features New York Knicks stars Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges, and the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Donte DiVincenzo. The 30-second spot shows how “staying close with your college besties” is not guaranteed, depicting DiVincenzo feeling excluded from the three Knicks teammates’ inner circle, before they toss him a Villanova cap.

“Shai, Chet & Jalen” stars the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams as they navigate an outfit miscommunication.

And Duke Blue Devils player Cooper Flagg takes center stage in an eponymously named spot depicting his lack of chill after winning at bingo.

While NCAA women’s basketball stars don’t appear to get equal billing in the campaign, UCLA Bruins teammates Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice star do in the 15-second “Lauren & KIki,” which notes that AT&T’s guarantee is meant for the brand’s “fast, friendly service,” not in helping customers avoid plot spoilers.

The campaign is running across NCAA March Madness broadcast partners CBS, TBS, TNT, Tru TV and ESPN, and associated digital channels. It follows the launch of the “AT&T Guarantee” campaign during NCAA football’s Orange Bowl game back in January.

This week, AT&T also celebrated the Congressional Gold Medal being awarded to the “Hello Girls" --  a group of women AT&T trainees who served during World War I as telephone operators for the American Expeditionary Forces -- with posts on its website and social media pages. An “Explain It To Me Like It’s 1925” post on the brand’s Instagram page calls the veterans the “OG comms queens,” noting they connected some 26 million calls while operating switchboards during World War I.