March Madness Goes Multiplatform

As CBS Corp. prepares to provide broad coverage of the upcoming March Madness NCAA Basketball tourna-ment, it becomes clear what innovators can do across multiple platforms.

The broadcasting giant will provide live coverage across several TV channels, live streaming video of almost all 63 games via its battle-tested CBSSports.com Web site largely for viewing of workday contests, access via Facebook Inc., and mobile content.

One of the largest live Internet events ever last year, it resulted in 1,277,266 unique users that CBSSports says watched 2,130,369 hours of live streaming video. The site even started a registration line for the limited-space event that comprised nearly 266,000 fans.

The 2008 NCAA March Madness on Demand Web event is free and subscription-based aided by sponsorships sold to Coca-Cola, Pontiac and AT&T. Launching in early March, NCAA March Madness on Demand will be available at NCAA.com (mmod.ncaa.com) as well as via MMOD links on CBSSports.com and CSTV.com.

So what’s missing from this made-for- live-consumption, multiweek, sporting extravaganza? If the M in multiplatform is also for mobile, than the answer to the question for CBS is live coverage to handheld devices.

CBS’s mobile unit says the same day CBSSports detailed the annual Web video streaming effort that it was again launching a live wireless video channel for its reality TV show “Big Brother: ‘Til Death Do You Part.” But no live NCAA tourney gamecasts.

However, users can receive real-time scores of the contests, updates and periodic highlights on their mobile devices from certain devices that use wireless services from AT&T and Verizon Wireless.

“Getting more people involved - in more ways - in March Madness is a central goal for the NCAA and March Madness on Demand continues to deliver,” says Greg Shaheen, senior vice-president for basketball and business strategies for the NCAA. “Whether through broadcast coverage of the tournament on CBS Sports and CSTV, streaming live video on NCAA.com, mobile coverage and highlights on CBS Sports Mobile or the tournament brackets application on Facebook, more fans now have more ways to view, follow, debate and enjoy March Madness than ever before.”

What you can get on a mobile device are real-time scoring updates and stats from games, contest highlights in video clip form, and the latest tournament news, all for Verizon Wireless and AT&T customers.

But while limitations apply to what can be done on the live mobile TV front, CBS Sports and others are fast forging ahead on the Web video front.

The broadcaster recently forged a landmark agreement with social networking giant Facebook designed to further ex-pand its customer base by making March Madness more than a passive viewing experience.

Under the agreement, the Facebook platform last week began running the CBSSports.com Tournament Brackets ap-plication for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. It’s pitched to the more than 63 million users of the popular social networking site, as well as to users of CBS Sports Mobile, thus creating a Web and wireless cross-platform offering.

The application augments the viewing experience by enabling users to fill out brackets for each round of the tourna-ment and enjoy comparing their picks with their friends. CBS has provided links that let Facebook users watch live game-casts at CBSSports.com.

“This presents an ideal opportunity to extend the CBSSports.com brand to yet another platform and one containing a very engaged and loyal audience,” says Jason Kint, senior vice-president and general manager of CBSSports.com.

CBSSports.com Tournament Brackets on Facebook offers users all of the features of the popular bracket games on CBSSports.com, including live updating scoreboards while games are in progress.

In addition, by using the Facebook toolset, users can create their own public or private bracket group and compare theirs with members of their social network, school affiliation, workplace or their friends.

Each NCAA basketball team has its own page, which lets participants follow their favorite teams throughout the indi-vidual conference tournaments that precede the NCAA event.

While it says it’s posting the fastest among users age 25 and over, Facebook also maintains an 85 percent market share of students currently attending four-year colleges and universities in the United States.

The social networking destination claims more than half of its users return to the site each day, and CBS believes this provides a huge distribution opportunity, and a big chance to build a business that is “highly relevant to people's lives.”

And with its increased emphasis on Web access to the NCAA tourney, CBSSports is looking to make video ads part of its revenue opportunities. The broadcasting titan is using an online video platform from Maven Networks Inc., which was bought this month by Yahoo for $160 million.

The video publishing platform provides CBSSports and others simple media management, workflow and flexible media players. Maven says it helps publishers boost video ad inventory and revenue by using a dynamic advertising insertion engine, inventory management, reporting tools and advanced ad formats.

That’s clearly good news for web video-focused companies, as the U.S. online video advertising will grow to more than $4 billion in 2011, according to Forrester Research.

Let the games begin!

AT&T Inc. www.att.com
CBS Corp. www.cbscorporation.com
CBSSports www.cbssports.com
Facebook Inc. www.facebook.com
Forrester Research www.forrester.com
Maven Networks, Inc. www.mavennetworks.com
Verizon Wireless www.verizonwireless.com
Yahoo Inc. www.yahoo.com

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