B-Ball Fans Fast Break To Madness Sites

Thanks to CBS' decision to broadcast games via the Web, nearly 10 million people flocked to sports-related websites on the first day of March Madness, the NCAA men's college basketball tournament, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. The largest increase was during working hours, where employees could watch at their desks. That represents a spike of 21 percent overall as sports fans sought to register before the start of the games on Thursday, March 16. But for CBS' AOL Sports and CSTV.com grew 46 percent over the previous week to 3.3 million unique visitors. CBS Sportsline.com (Web channel) saw a 28 percent growth to 2.4 million unique visitors. "CBS Sportsline.com did well to promote early user registration for its streamed live games, contributing to a spike in traffic on its network of sites," said Gibs. "While there was some concern that CBS would not be able to handle the massive amount of streaming traffic, so far few concerns have been voiced by consumers. The only real question that remains is if CBS can turn these March Madness' customers into long-term visitors." At-work traffic to NCAA sites outdrew at-home traffic by over a million visitors (5.9 million to 4.8 million) on March 16. But Gibs is uncertain about the impact it had on productivity. "There have been in the past, and there will be going forward, concerns about the effects of major sporting events on worker productivity," said Gibs. "Workplaces, however, should consider that many of these same workers could just as well be taking long lunches, or repeatedly refreshing browser windows to see new scores. So while video is certainly not adding to worker productivity, the jury is still out on its negative effects." Tag: | document.write("Email Murdok here.") Drag this to your Bookmarks. Add to document.write("Del.icio.us") Yahoo My Web