Just in from Turner Sports, the success of March Madness on Demand is staggering. People have found it at NCAA.com in droves. Traffic is up considerably from last year when we thought it was a big success. Visits have jumped 47% from last year with a total of 26.7 million hits from the start of the FIRST FOUR® to the third round games on Sunday. Usually, the hits drop after Thursday and Friday as workers find the games on TV, but this is quite staggering to see the visits continue throughout the weekend.
The press release from Turner Sports.
2011 NCAA® March Madness® on Demand Sees Increase in Total Visits Across Multiple Platforms for the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship
Online and mobile consumption of NCAA March Madness complements strong growth of television ratings on four networks: TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV
Turner Sports, CBS Sports and the NCAA announced today that NCAA March Madness on Demand (MMOD) has delivered a 47% increase in total visits across the MMOD broadband and mobile products for the first three rounds of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship. In total, there were 26.7 million visits across the NCAA online and mobile platforms from the start of the First Four® on March 15 to the completion of the third round on March 20. Additionally, the first three rounds of the tournament garnered 10.3 million total hours of live streaming video consumed through the MMOD broadband and mobile products.
Other NCAA.com and MMOD highlights for the Tournament to date include:
- An average of 2.4 million daily unique visitors on broadband and 702K average daily unique users on mobile app.
- MMOD was the #1 free app for both iPhone and iPad on Thursday, March 17 and Friday, March 18 in the App store.
- 36% of all streams for MMOD on Saturday, March 19 and Sunday, March 20 were from the iPad and iPhone apps.
- An average of 92.9 minutes per daily unique visitor was spent streaming MMOD on broadband Thursday, March 17 – Sunday, March 20.
- An average of 20.4 minutes per daily unique visitor was spent streaming MMOD on mobile apps Thursday, March 17 – Sunday, March 20.
NCAA March Madness on Demand provides live streaming video, plus interactive TV companion functionality, of every game of the new 68-team tournament as they are broadcast for the first time this year nationally in their entirety on four networks: TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV. Free to users across all platforms, including on broadband, the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch (over Wi-fi and 3G), March Madness on Demand offers new features for fans to view the games including improved live viewing with richer quality and larger format streams, a personalizable channel lineup feature, and live stats and social media interaction.
Through Sunday, the television coverage on TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV for the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship, including the FIRST FOUR, is averaging a 5.5 US HH Rtg /13 share, up +15% from a 4.8/11 for CBS Sports’ 2010 coverage according to Nielsen Fast Nationals. CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV averaged 8.4 million total viewers, up +14% over CBS Sports’ 7.4 million total viewers in 2010.
2011 sources – Omniture (online traffic – uniques/streaming/duration), Conviva (mobile streaming/duration), Bango (mobile visits/uniques)
That’s going to do it. Back later tonight.
