This Shoe Trading Platform Is Running a March Madness-Style Sneaker Bracket With a $25K Prize

Shoshy Ciment
·3 min read

Tradeblock is giving sneaker enthusiasts a way to win big this March.

Capitalizing on the excitement around March Madness, the NCAA college basketball tournament, the sneaker trading platform this month is rolling out “March Mania,” a sneaker bracket challenge that offers participants the chance to win $25,000. To get involved, users fill out their own bracket ranking the best sneakers between 2020 and 2023, culminating in a final pick of the top sneaker in the last four years.

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The concept is similar to selecting a winning NCAA basketball team in a March Madness bracket, with the geographic regions substituted by years (2020-2023). Once participants fill out their bracket, they will be prompted to share their final selections on social media, inviting debate and conversation about how they got to their top sneaker. Darren Smith, co-founder and chief operational officer of Tradeblock, said the goal of this shareable bracket screen is to inspire a robust discourse online.

“In the sneaker community, sneaker of the year is a huge thing every year,” explained Darren Smith, co-founder and chief operational officer of Tradeblock. “It drums up a bunch of fun debate.”

The bracket starts off with the 17 top shoes for each year between 2020 and 2024 (or 68 shoes total), a selection that was created based on crowdsourced feedback from Tradeblock’s user base. From there, the bracket whittles down to the top sneaker from each year, bringing them all head-to-head for the final four and so on.

The winning bracket was determined by a selection committee at Tradeblock, including Smith, and was based on elements such as design, creativity, storytelling, historical context and a shoe’s importance in sneaker culture — and of course, personal preference.

“We locked ourselves in a room and we determined some criteria that we were going to score each shoe on when we were trying to defend our our picks,” Smith said. “We’re acknowledging that our personal preference definitely played a factor into this.”

The starting 68 sneakers in the bracket are made up of 30 pairs from Jordan brand, 25 from Nike, nine from New Balance, two Yeezys and a pair each from Saucony and Asics.

To enter a bracket, participants must download and sign-up for Tradeblock (which is free of cost) and enter to win before the end of the month. If more than one person submits a perfect bracket, the prize will be split among them. If no one wins, the person with the most points (which are earned for each correct matchup) will receive $10,000.

Tradeblock, which was founded in 2020, currently has more than 350,000 members, a number it is looking to grow via its March Mania program as well as other initiatives.

“I’m hoping that it really catalyzes the sneaker community and gets them going and excited,” Smith said of March Mania. “I really want to create a moment around this.”

Tradeblock in 2022 raised more than $8.9 million in a seed funding round. The company was also recognized as Forbes Next 1000, Class of 2021 and received funding from Google for Startups’ Black Founders Fund, an important milestone in the company’s growth.

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