Instagram Adds March Madness-Themed Features

Instagram’s added some new features for March Madness, providing more ways for fans to engage with college basketball in the app.

First off, IG’s added some new basketball animations that will appear on Notes when you use certain keywords.

As you can see in this example, when you include terms like “Bracket buster,” “Slam Dunk,” and “Miami Heat” in your inbox Notes, basketball icons will appear on your Notes display.

I mean, I’m not sure how many people are saying “did you see that slam dunk?”, but semantics aside, it’s a themed addition for basketball fans.

Instagram’s also added a special effect for DMs when you share a Reel from the tournament, or from one of your favorite team’s IG accounts.

There’s also a new “basketball” chat theme, as well as team-based “Add Yours” templates for Stories, providing more ways to show your support.

Finally, IG’s also added 32 new team-specific Giphy stickers for Stories.

Some fun additions, which could help to encourage more engagement and sharing around the event. I mean, most of these are Easter egg style additions, so you’re not actively adding them, as such. But even so, when other users see these effects activated, that could encourage them to share the same.

Instagram’s keen to tap into sports, in order to win more fans across from X, which remains the leader in real-time sports engagement. If Meta can build its own sports communities, on both IG and Threads, that could be a big step in building both apps as natural homes for real-time sports discussion.

Which X is still better suited to, but the visual focus of IG could make it a good complement, and thematic celebrations like this may help in Meta’s broader effort.