Turner Sports

March Madness viewing: More digital options, plus some virtual reality

March 8, 2016 by Paul Kapustka 1 Comment

Remember when college basketball tournament season only had a small slice of games available online? Or when you had to pay extra to watch online? It wasn’t that long ago. Thankfully though the future is here now and for 2016 the college hoops postseason has even more ways to watch games mobile or online, including one option to watch games via virtual reality programming.

Like last year, if you have a qualifying cable contract, you are basically covered and should be able to watch all the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament games live, on whichever platform you want. The best way to start is to head to the NCAA’s March Madness home page, where you should be able to find any and all information on devices, apps and other avenues to streaming coverage. According to Turner Sports, the NCAA and CBS Sports the games will be available live on 12 different platforms, including Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Roku players and Roku TV models. The new March Madness Live app isn’t avalable until Thursday, so check back soon for the go-to app for everything March Madness.

Also like last year, you should be able to watch a few minutes of the first game you see without having to log in — great if you are just trying to catch a buzzer beater. The games of course will be available on regular TV, and the March Madness home page has what may be a great time saver, a widget that helps you find those obscure cable channels other than CBS or TNT where the games might be on. Since we’ve just moved, MSR’s NCAA viewing team might make good use of the Zip Code-powered channel finder.

Even if you don’t have a cable contract you can still watch a lot of games that are streamed online; games broadcast on CBS will be available for no charge on desktop, mobile and tablet platforms, while games broadcast on the other channels (TNT, TBS, truTV and local channels) should be available on those providers’ websites. Again, if you get stuck or lost just defaulting back to the March Madness home page should give you a path to whatever game it is you’re looking for.

Big East tourney available in VR

If you have a NextVR platform you will be able to watch the 2016 Big East tournament (it starts Thursday, March 10) thanks to a partnership between FOX Sports and NextVR. We’re not VR-savvy here at MSR headquarters yet but with seven games and 15 hours of programming scheduled this might be a cool treat for VR fans. NextVR has an instruction page on how to watch the games in VR; if anyone tries this out, send us an email with a report on how it worked (or didn’t) and we’ll let everyone else know.

Also, don’t forget — this year for the first time the NCAA Men’s Championship game, scheduled for Monday, April 4, will be on TBS, NOT on CBS, the first time the champs game has been only on cable. And, there will be streaming options as well during Final Four weekend, according to the official announcement:

For the NCAA Final Four National Semifinals on Saturday, April 2, from Houston, NCAA March Madness Live will provide three distinct live video streams of both games to provide unprecedented viewing options for fans – live streaming of the traditional game coverage provided on TBS, along with “Team Stream by Bleacher Report” coverage or team-specific presentations offered via TNT and truTV. This year’s NCAA Tournament will include the National Championship airing on TBS, the first time the championship has ever been televised on cable television.

Filed Under: Amazon, Android, Apple, Apps, Basketball, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, iPad, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Hoops, Samsung, Tablets, TNT, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: Big Dance, Final Four, Live sports via mobile, Men's NCAA Tournament, Mobile Sports Report, NCAA, NCAA Hoops, Paul Kapustka, Tablet, Turner Sports

March Madness online resets the record books with 17.8 million hours of live viewing

April 7, 2015 by Paul Kapustka Leave a Comment

Turner Sports and the NCAA said that online viewing of the 2015 men’s NCAA basketball tournament once again set new records, showing (again) that the demand for live sports online is still growing steadily with no top in sight.

From the round of 64 to One Shining Moment this year’s March Madness Live audience racked up 17.8 million hours of online viewing, according to figures released by Turner Sports and the NCAA Tuesday. The 80.7 million individual live streams were an increase of 17 percent over the 2014 tournament coverage, and the total hours watched was up 19 percent from last year.

Things really ramped up online for this past weekend’s Final Four games, with the Saturday semifinal doubleheader recording 6 million live video streams (an increase of 59 percent over 2014) and 1.5 million hours (an increase of 53 percent) of online watching, according to Turner and the NCAA. Monday’s championship game saw 3.4 million video streams started, with 1 million hours of live video consumed — totals that increased 66 percent and 69 percent, respectively, from 2014 figures. Overall, the NCAA and Turner Sports also said that mobile-only viewing also surged, increasing 20 percent in both views and hours from last year, though they did not provide a breakout figure for mobile-only viewing.

What is helping the increase in online watching? For one the ease in which March Madness could be consumed — watching this year on various platforms I noticed that the sign-in procedure with my cable contract info didn’t need to be repeated — ever — on my desktop or on my mobile device; in previous years the sign-in technology had been somewhat of a gating factor, and in the earliest years the extra-charge fee for watching games online almost certainly kept the audience much lower than it could be.

And now that fans know the games will be available online in an easy to find place — MarchMadness.com — they seem to know to go there for the early games that take place during work hours. In fact, the most-watched game online after the Final Four was a Round of 64 game between Notre Dame and Northeastern, which took place in the morning of March 19 — with 3.9 million video streams, it was clear that people at work got wind of the potential upset in the making and tuned in.

For once I have no complaints about the technical parts of the online March Madness offering — I watched the entire second half of the gripping Notre Dame-Kentucky regional game on my phone over Wi-Fi, and had no glitches, buffering or any other transmission problems. The only nit I would pick is why broadcasters like Turner feel it’s OK to impose technical control over online viewers, like blocking the mute button on the video screen during commercials, or by floating the little “Pizza Hut” icon on the left of the screen during game play, a small annoyance but noticeable. You’d be crucified for trying stunts like that on broadcast TV, so why insult viewers online just because you can?

Filed Under: Apps, Basketball, Duke University, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Hoops, TBS, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: CBS, CBS Sports, Duke, Final Four, Kentucky, March Madness, Mobile Sports Report, NCAA, NCAA basketball tournament, Paul Kapustka, Turner Sports, Wisconsin

TV Everywhere drives strong growth in March Madness viewership

April 9, 2014 by Greg Quick 1 Comment

The push to entice digital viewers to follow this year’s NCAA Basketball tournament was a resounding success for NCAA.com and Turner Sports as their NCAA March Madness Live push underwent continued growth in a year when the championship game was down a bit from the previous year on broadcast television.

The broadcasting of the championship game saw a 10% decline in viewership on television. However the match between Kentucky and Connecticut generated two million live video streams, up 30% when compared with last year’s championship game.

The digital streaming effort, which includes its TV Everywhere initiative, maintained strong support from the digital space even in the face of a number of the better know and more popular schools being eliminated early in the tournament this year.

It set a new record for video consumption, as it has in the past few years, with this year’s event with a 42% increase in live video streaming over last year to bring the collective total over all platforms to 69.7 million live video streams. NCAA March Madness Live registered 15 million hours of live video streaming, a new high and up 7% from 2013.

The mobile space, where tablets and smartphones are still undergoing strong growth themselves, experienced very strong growth with an increase of 71% in live streams over the course of the tournament, and the total hours grew by 38% over last year.

In addition to more viewers, they stayed on longer while viewing watching an average of 67% more minutes than non-registered viewers. While a user can register and watch TV Everywhere on a PC, the use of that platform as a second screen appears to be fading in favor of mobile devices. The live streams on logged-in mobile devices representing 52% of the total TV Everywhere usage for the entire tournament

The growth was in a good part helped by the variety of ways that fans could access the tournament aside from mainstream broadcast television that NCAA.com and its partners Turner Sports and CBS Sports made available. There was an option of any one of three web sites available as well as NCAA March Madness Live available via the Amazon Appstore, Apple App Store, Google Play and Windows Store. On top of all of that fans could watch games via live streaming on TNT, TBS and truTV’s digital platforms, as well as participating TV provider websites.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Basketball, CBS Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, TNT, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: CBS Sports, Final Four, NCAA Hoops, NCAA March Madness Live, truTV, Turner Sports, TV Everywhere

Mobile viewership soars in setting March Madness record

April 1, 2014 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

Mobile digital viewers are making their collective strength known during the current NCAA tournament by blowing away last year’s then record setting totals, and doing so with the championship weekend still ahead.

The numbers of hours of live video consumed is up only slightly from last year but the amount of live video streams that fans are viewing has tremendously increased as users are voting with their tablets, computers and smartphones that streaming video is a viable delivery format for fans.

The breakdown for the tournament through its second week shows that NCAA March Madness Live has seen 13.5 million hours of video watched, a 7% increase over last year’s 12.6 million at this point in the event. That video is comprised of 64 million live video streams over that time period, a 40% increase from last year’s 45 million. To put it in a clearer context last year for the entire tournament there was a total of 49 million videos streamed.

The role of mobile usage in driving up these numbers is obvious. Simply counting the mobile portion of the total streaming viewership shows that smartphones and tablet usage saw a 71% increase over the same two weeks last year with live streaming hours on those two platforms increasing by 38% over the same span a year earlier.

Of course in terms of percentages the growth appears to be leveling off since in 2013 the growth rate for live video streams was 145% over 2012 and the number of hours was up 201% from 2012, but it shows that strong growth is still occurring and is likely to maintain a strong pace going forward.

According to video delivery technology firm Ooyala the amount of minutes video minutes that have been viewed on tablets and smartphones has grown 719% in the last two years and that sports fans spent 62% of the time viewing videos longer than 10 minutes. It estimates that mobile viewership will encompass half of all video viewed by 2016.

Two Final Four Apps Launched
NCAA.com and Turner Sports are launching a pair of event-based apps to take advantage of the interest in the Men’s and Women’s Final Four tournaments this weekend available for Android and Apple mobile devices.

The two apps, NCAA Final Four North Texas app presented by AT&T and Women’s Final Four Nashville will serve fans at the events as well as those that will be following them remotely. For fans in the two towns where the games will be played the app can serve as a guide to the city and event with information such as schedule information, interactive maps, tickets, free Wi-Fi locations in the cities, news, and social media features.

The Men’s app appears to be the more feature rich and has a number of events such as AT&T Final Four Photo Hunt- a scavenger hunt around North Texas, the Coke Zero NCAA Social Arena. Both have an interactive map, the ability to buy tickets and merchandise and a daily events schedule.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Basketball, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Market Research, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, Social Media Data, Sports Social Media, Tablets, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: Apps, Final Four, March Madness Live, NBA basketball on iPads, NCAA.com, Turner Sports, watch March Madness online

Turner Sports’ digital approach to March Madness a winner

March 24, 2014 by Greg Quick 1 Comment

While most people I know have already seen their NCAA brackets crushed, one player is clearly winning at the tournament and that is Turner Sports and its online game-viewing policy.

According to Turner the men’s 2014 NCAA tournament has set an all-time record for online video consumption with a total of 51 million video streams accessed through the first full week of the tournament, a number that is 40% greater than what it achieved a year ago at the same point in the event.

To put the number in greater perspective, last year for the entire tournament there were a grand total of 49 million video streams accessed for the event. These numbers represent users accessing the videos from desktops or laptops as well as smartphones and tablets. Mobile (tablets and smartphones) platforms experienced the highest segment growth this year, with live streams for mobile device users up 74% over the first week of the tournament in 2013, according to Turner.

It is interesting to note that the videos were watched for 10.5 million hours, a number that witnessed only an increase by a mere 6%, showing that fans liked the ability to cherry pick the events that they watched and came in droves for them.

According to Turner Sports the top games featured some of the exciting upsets that have been a major factor in this tournament.

§ Dayton vs. Ohio State – 4,626,000 viewers
§ Mercer vs. Duke – 4,218,000
§ Harvard vs. Cincinnati – 2,767,000
§ Kentucky vs. Wichita State – 1,987,000
§ Stanford vs. New Mexico – 1,451,000

Not surprisingly the broadcast side of the business also had a record setting first week. The four networks that carried the games, TBS, truTV, CBS and TNT reported that they had the best first week in the 23 years that they have been carrying the tournament. It is averaging 9,277,000, up 4% from last year.

Filed Under: Apps, CBS Sports, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, TBS, TNT, truTV, Turner Sports Tagged With: CBS Sports, March Madness, TNT, truTV, Turner Sports, watch March Madness online

New app features, streaming opportunities for March Madness

March 19, 2014 by Greg Quick Leave a Comment

The NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball tournament, or as it is better known March Madness, has already started but there is still time for those that wait until the 13th hour to get their act together to both follow the tournament as a fan and your bracket as, well also a fan.

First and foremost is watching and following the games and Turner Sports, along with NCAA.com and CBS Sports have simplified that by making all of the games available online, with some requirements for the viewer. You can go to the March Madness main page for more information; the key is finding the “Select TV provider” button in the upper left corner as you must have a qualifying TV service contract to watch online. The effort by Turner et al may shake up how future major sporting events are broadcast and garnered solid reviews in Fast Company. There is also a twist for the Final Four television coverage, where there will be separate announcing teams on alternative Turner channels. The SI roundup has a good description of what’s going on, television-wise.

Pretty much any newspaper, blog, web site and sports channel has a contest, ranging from billionaire Warren Buffett and Quicken Loans’ offer to pay $1 billion to anybody that picks all 64 winners to local office and bar pools.

The next games start Thursday and many pools allow you to enter up until just before tipoff of that round. If you are looking around for something that is not in the mainstream but will connect you to everybody that you might want to chart with, or talk trash with.

An app launching in support of the iPad in time for the tournament is called FanKave, and it functions much like you might imagine. You enter a ‘Kave’ for each game and can talk, both online and using voice, with friends or rivals while receiving play-by-play results. A nice feature is that from a Kave a fan can post to a variety of social media sites such as Facebook without needed to open a separate app for that.

The app supports more than simply the basketball tournament, with the NFL, NBA and NCAA football available now and MLB and FIFA World Cup 2014 expected soon. It is currently available only on the iPad platform but its developers said that iPhone and Android versions are expected soon.

A more established mobile app called theScore is also trying to make hay while the tournament’s sun shines by adding a number of additional features that revolve around March Madness. Among the new features is an ‘upset tracker’ that uses push notification to let users know that an underdog is leading with 5:00 minutes in the game.

There are plenty of established apps as well and pretty much everybody I know has multiple ones to follow both the tournament but also teams that they are interested in. Checking out specific schools can get you apps that (sometimes) enable you to closely follow the team’s progress through the tournament.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Basketball, CBS Sports, Duke University, Facebook, FIFA, Instagram, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iTunes, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBA, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com, NFL, truTV, Turner Sports, Twitter Tagged With: Apps, CBS Sports, FanKave, iPad, March Madness, NCAA, NCAA Basketball, Streaming Sports, theScore, Turner Sports, watch March Madness online

March Madness viewing: More digital options, plus some virtual reality

Big East tourney available in VR

March Madness online resets the record books with 17.8 million hours of live viewing

TV Everywhere drives strong growth in March Madness viewership

Turner Sports’ digital approach to March Madness a winner

New app features, streaming opportunities for March Madness

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