It’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament time — otherwise known as March Madness — and the online streaming initiative from CBS Sports and the NCAA is already netting massive numbers: 3.4 million hours of video/audio were streamed online by three million unique visitors on day one.
Those staggering numbers mean that online viewership is already up 20% over last year’s figures, and apparently a large majority of you have no problem watching from work. In fact, the always clever “Boss Button” — a one-click option to hide your guilty pleasure — has already received 1.7 million clicks.
So far the most-watched game via March Madness On Demand was Florida vs. BYU. The game — which BYU won in double-overtime — was streamed for a total of 521,000 hours across all online viewers. That’s up 50% over last year’s top-streamed game on day one.
The impressive numbers point to a growing interest in consuming live events online. As with the Grammys and Twilight red carpet events, the new trend is an online Field of Dreams; if you stream it, they will come.
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Tags: cbs, NCAA, ncaa tournament
