March Madness Rivalry Chats on GroupMe

March Madness is loud. The buzzer beaters, the upsets, the brackets busted by halftime. But for most college students, the loudest part isn't the arena. It's the group chat.

This year, GroupMe decided to bring that energy to life. Over the final two weeks of the NCAA tournament, we launched a pilot experience that turned campus rivalries into real-time group chats. Think of it as digital bleachers, where students from two competing schools could cheer, talk trash, and ride the highs and lows of every game together.

And in the process, we debuted four pilot next-gen features: Vanishing Groups, Copilot Highlights, Scoreboard Chats, and Chat Themes.

The Experience: Campus vs. Campus

For each game in the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, and Championship, we created a dedicated group chat. But not just any group chat. Each one was exclusive to students from the two competing schools. No outside fans, no random joiners. Just your campus vs. theirs.

That exclusivity made the experience feel real. You weren't chatting with strangers on the internet. You were repping your school against the rival across the bracket. Every message carried weight because you were in it together with your campus.

We ran 15 game chats across the tournament, and thousands of students showed up.

Live Scoreboards, Pinned to the Top

Not every student could watch every game live. Classes, work, life happens. So we pinned a live scoreboard to the top of each game chat. No matter when you opened the chat, the score was right there.

Students could follow the game in real time without switching apps, pulling up a browser, or asking "what's the score?" every two minutes. The scoreboard kept everyone locked in, whether they were courtside or in the library.

Copilot Highlights: Your Sports Play-by-Play

We brought Copilot into the game chats with a Sports bot that tracked key moments and posted updates to the group. Scoring runs, lead changes, tight scores: the bot flagged the moments that mattered so fans could react in real time.

It turned every chat into a living play-by-play. Even if you stepped away for a few minutes, you could scroll back and catch the momentum shifts. And when the bot dropped an update about a 10-0 run? The chat erupted.

Vanishing Groups: You Had to Be There

Here's where things got interesting. Every game chat was a Vanishing Group. Once the final buzzer sounded, a countdown started. When the timer hit zero, the group disappeared. Gone. No scrolling back, no screenshots of old messages, no revisiting the conversation.

It created a "you had to be there" energy that made every message feel urgent. If you wanted to get the last word in, you had to do it before the clock ran out. The stakes of the game extended into the chat itself.

Vanishing Groups are now available for anyone to create. Set a timer, start a conversation, and let it live in the moment.

Chat Themes: Rep Your Colors

Each game chat featured custom Chat Themes, a feature we just released this month. Students saw their school colors reflected in the chat background and design, making the whole experience feel personalized and competitive from the jump.

We also included campus badges so everyone could see which school each person was repping. It was clear who was on which side, and the friendly banter hit different when you could see the rival badge next to every trash talk message.

Chat Themes are available now for all GroupMe users. Personalize any group chat and make it yours.

GroupMe was built for this

This pilot wasn't just a one-off stunt. It worked because GroupMe already has the foundation for large-scale, high-energy group experiences.

• Campus Student-Only groups. We leverage our GroupMe Campus tab to invite verified students exclusive group chat that only they could be a part

• Privacy first. No one had to share their phone number to join.

• Scale that holds up. GroupMe supports 20,000+ members in a single group. Thousands of students in a game chat? No sweat.

• Clean notifications. Group update notifications consolidate all the join and leave activity so the actual conversation stays readable.

• Fast media uploads. GIFs, reactions, and stickers flew without lag.

• Built-in social features. Polls, reactions, GIF search, stickers: all the tools that make a group chat feel alive were already there.

GroupMe is built for chatting with real people. Not algorithms, not anonymous feeds. Real conversations with real communities. That's what made these game chats feel like actual bleachers and not just another comment section.

What's Next

We're just getting started. The March Madness pilot proved that GroupMe can power live, large-scale community experiences that feel exclusive, urgent, and genuinely fun. We're excited to scale this to more events, more campuses, and more moments throughout the year.

Stay tuned. And in the meantime, try out Vanishing Groups and Chat Themes with your own crew. Start a game night chat that disappears at midnight. Theme your fantasy league chat in your team's colors. Make the group chat the place to be.

Real chats happen here. And sometimes, they vanish before you know it.