CBS is running a full court press on offering ways for viewers to watch their favourite team make it all the way in this year’s NCAA March Madness. Once again, they’re offering free live streaming access to all games through NCAA March Madness on Demand complete with game highlights, historical video clips and an interactive bracket so you can track your team picks throughout the tourney. Opening round coverage of the tournament attracted 2.7 million unique visits to its online video player, a 56% increase over last year. We love watching hoops any way we can get it. Live video and audio streams of first round games totalled 2.8 million hours, a 65% growth from last year’s 1.7 million hours. We’re not just watching it at home as the site also recorded 1.5 million clicks on the “Boss Botton” which replaces streaming video with a fake spreadsheet so you can get your game on at work without the boss being the wiser.
Jason Kint, SVP and GM of CBSSports credits the success to, “the extremely strong growth we’ve seen from NCAA March Madness on Demand from day one of the tournament reinforces the fact that this event is the largest and most popular live sports event on the Internet. Our success is being driven through a massive cross-platform marketing campaign.” Those efforts translated into online advertising sales of $30 million, a 30% increase over last year.
Don’t Miss The Action on MMOD
This year, iPhone users can watch all the action with the new CBS Sports NCAA MMOD iPhone application for $4.99 from iTunes. Here are five other March Madness iPhone apps to keep you updated.
CBSSports has given website publishers several options to link directly to NCAA March Madness on Demand by allowing them to embed widgets or applications into their website, blog, or social networking profile page. The MMOD video player is also integrated with Facebook so you can update your status and trash talk rivals while you’re watching games.
Now you and your friends can stay up-to-date on all the latest news, scores, video highlights, and community commentary on the go. Official numbers haven’t been released for MMOD iPhone app downloads but it did hit number four on the top paid apps list just days after it was released.
