CBS Sportsline Site Ups Capacity for March Madness

Hoping to avoid a new meaning for March Madness, sports mega-Web site CBS Sportsline has doubled its bandwidth for live streaming video of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

The games, broadcast by CBS, are streamed free of charge on the site. Last year, NCAA March Madness on Demand (MMOD) was presented for free for the first time since its debut in 2003, producing tremendous traffic results with more than 19 million video streams and 5 million visits, resulting in one of the largest live Internet events ever.

CBS Sportsline built the video player for the event and has increased the bandwidth connection to it from the 80gbps it used last year to 160gbps for this season’s tourney, according to a spokesman for the company. CBS also uses a content delivery network service to push out the video streams.

The huge level of interest in consuming the basketball games online demonstrates the allure of streaming video and the need to adjust IT infrastructure accordingly to support it, if only at peak periods.

CBS said that, in order to effectively control a massive anticipated peak in demand during the games on March 15 and 16, access to the MMOD video player will be carefully managed using a "virtual waiting room." If demand exceeds peak capacity on during the opening rounds or at any other point of the tournament virtual lines will form.

CBS said that to have the best opportunity to view live streaming video from the tournament, fans should pre-register for MMOD to obtain VIP status.

Fans that don't will be placed in a general admission area where they will experience longer wait times to get into the MMOD player if it is full on game days. Three days ago, the site said roughly half of MMOD's 2007 VIP inventory has been reserved, warning that demand will only increase as the tournament approaches.

"March Madness on Demand is one of the most successful initiatives that the NCAA and the CBS Corp. has implemented when you couple evolving technology and the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship," said Greg Shaheen, senior vice president for basketball and business strategies at the NCAA. "March Madness on Demand allows the NCAA and CBS to deliver the championship to a new technologically-savvy audience that previously may not have had the opportunity to view the championship."

New video player-enabled features include a 50 percent larger screen. In 2006, the MMOD video player screen measured 320 by 240 pixels. In 2007, the video screen has been enlarged to 480 by 360 pixels.

CBS SportsLine will provide streaming live audio from Westwood One's radio broadcasts of the first 56 games of the tournament via the MMOD player. These broadcasts will include the game that is being shown in each user's local CBS market (which is blacked-out on the MMOD video player).

For those watching at work, CBS is bringing back what it calls the "Boss Button," which enables viewers with one click to replace the live video action on the screen with a silent readymade spread sheet.

The sports site will also make available archived footage of each full game of the first three rounds. Additionally, highlights packages will be available for all games. The MMOD player and archival footage will be accessible through April 10.

CBS Sportsline www.cbs.sportsline.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines