Fact: According to the American Gaming Association, 40 million Americans may have filled-out more than 70 million brackets this year.

Forty million bracket submitters – that’s more than double the average viewership of the 2014 NBA Finals (15.5m). Seventy million brackets – that’s close to triple the combined following of the NCAA (1.55m) and the NBA (13.7m) on Twitter! The suggestion can be made that the evolution of mobile applications has attributed to the growth of users submitting and printing brackets. But while technology may have given us a more user friendly gateway to filling out a bracket, many fans still choose to complete them the old-fashioned way – by printing.

With printer technology’s adoption of Apple AirPrint® and Google Cloud Print™, users can print a blank bracket directly from their smart phone or tablet. With the help of Google’s Keyword Planner, in March 2014, 4.6% of users who searched for the keyword “printable” bracket did so from a mobile device. This was a 1.4% increase from 2013. With mobile device usage on the rise again this year, we can expect a substantial increase with the data from March 2015.

Similar to mobile applications, printing manufacturers are working to simplify the end-user experience. With both industries continuing to enhance their technologies, it will not be long until bracket related mobile applications begin working together with mobile printing technologies. Could we see apps like ESPN TC and MM Live implement a feature in the future that lets users print their completed brackets via AirPrint® and Google Cloud Print™?

Seventy million brackets will be a difficult number to surpass, but as long as mobile application developers engage in new technology enhancements, the numbers will continue to rise.

By Frank Mazza, Digital Marketing Manager, OKI Data