The mobile and online viewing market for the most recent MCAA Division 1 basketball tournament ended just like it started, setting records for viewership and total amount of live game video streamed to fans.
The tournament was a huge televised hit, with the final between Louisville and Michigan garnering a an average 23.4 million viewers, up 12% from last year and a 19 year high, the online virewership was also record setting.
The overall mobile and online viewership hit 49 million live video streams, an increase of 168% from last year with more than 14 million hours of live video consumed by the fans. Both of these numbers set new records.
Not surprisingly the mobile space, with the strong growth of tablets in the last year and the powerful presence of smartphones, saw very strong growth for the tournament. Minutes were up 309% for mobile phones and 194% for tablet users.
PC users still represent a strong viewing group with broadband users represented 5.8 million unique visitors who watched games from their systems and they averaged 105 minutes of live video watched per user while mobile users averaged 70 minutes.
Social media users were also out in force, with the National Championship game netting a total of 3.5 million comments across all social media monitored, up 144% from last year. For the tournament as a whole there were 16.3 million comments, up 112% from last year.
The top ranked games across digital platforms during the 2013 NCAA Tournament, based on live video streams. Interesting to note that the final was not the top game
Valparaiso vs. Michigan State – 1,844,000
Bucknell vs. Butler – 1,784,000
Mississippi vs. Wisconsin – 1,778,000
Michigan vs. Louisville – 1,620,000
Albany vs. Duke – 1,488,000
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