March Madness On Demand Soars 56% On Tourney's Opening Day
2.7 Million Unique Visitors Check Out Streaming Package; Consumption Leaps 65% To 1.7 Million Hours
Mike Reynolds -- Multichannel News, 3/20/2009 3:40:40 PM
March Madness on Demand continues to march briskly.
The Internet streaming service for the NCAA Men's Division 1 Basketball Tournament scored a 56% jump to 2.7 million unique visitors on the tourney's opening day, according to CBSSports.com, CBS Sports and the NCAA. That was up from 1.75 million on the first day of the 2008 tournament
All told, the MMOD video player facilitated 2.8 million total hours of live streaming video and audio, a 65% leap from the first day of the 2008 tournament, when 1.7 million hours were consumed, according to CBSSports.com officials.
There were 1.5 million clicks of the "boss button," which takes users at work to a spread sheet. The application, sponsored by Comcast, was used 2.5 million times during the course of the entire 2008 tournament.
"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," said Jason Kint, senior vice president and general manager, CBSSports.com, in a statement. "Our success is being driven through a massive cross-platform marketing campaign that includes CBS Interactive's leading properties, promotion across CBS Corporate network television and radio assets and tremendous distribution from our partner sites in the developer platform."
Prior to the tournament, Kint, who said CBSSports.com and NCAA.com would be accessible through 300 entry points, estimated that the number of unique visitors to MMOD this year would grow by 50% to 7.2 million, compared to 4.8 million last year. That figure had soared 164% from 1.8 million with the 2007 tournament.
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