March Madness on Demand Adds More Features, Higher Quality Video
CBS Sports has enhanced their NCAA March Madness on Demand site by offering third party sites access to free applications that feed live scores and other information from games.
Additionally, the NCAA March Madness Developer site offers a selection of widgets that are more sophisticated than ever including applications dedicated to brackets, live scoring, and news on each of the Division I Men’s Basketball Programs. So, for example, we can feature this widget on our blog (just don’t tell our boss Doug, the die-hard hockey fan).
You can also provide a link to see games like Michigan vs. Clemson (Thursday at 6:10 p.m. CT) for free online in HD using Microsoft’s Silverlight player. However, you’ll want to have Silverlight pre-installed, de-activate any pop-up blockers and in this case be a Wolverine fan.
CBS has said that they anticipate a 30% increase in ad revenue from their March Madness site this year reaching nearly $30 million. Last year was the first that all games were available via the on demand site and revenue jumped 130%.
I think this is excellent example of using new media to the benefit of vendor customer. Major League Baseball and the men’s NCAA basketball championship are two of the most successful ventures into audio/video distribution via the web. CBS is making money, and fans win by seeing every play for any game that interests them, without being at the mercy of the television regional coverage.
As a Michigan fan, I was so relieved to be able to switch to the VOD site when my affiliate cut to a more exciting upset in the making (we were up 14 at the time!) I didn’t miss a play (though, latency gave me a replay of a particularly ugly Clemson possession.)
There are still ads, but this is the perfect format for ads because sports are riddled with media and (occasionally) team timeouts. Instead of your standard sports commercial fair, the online video ads can be more targeted.