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Every Media Outlet in the Pool! It's March Madness, Um, Madness

By Catharine Taylor

Updated on: March 19, 2010 / 3:56 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

My BNET colleague David Weir mused in a post earlier this week that what March Madness really needs is "a crazy story line" -- something like "some tiny school" going all the way. A strong narrative certainly never hurts, but the more I look at March Madness, the more I wonder if all that's required for it to be HUGE is the continued proliferation of digital bells and whistles, which foster interest in the tournament across all platforms, from TV to iPhones.

Certainly, BNET's corporate overlord, CBS, has them in spades as the official broadcast network of the tournament, but, really, the whole thing has gotten so well, mad, that I decided to spend some time seeing how major outlets get in on the game, pun fully intended. The results are below.

At CBS alone, there's the:

Tournament Teams widget which provides a steady stream of data.
The NCAA Vault of classic footage from the tournament, now with interactive timelines.
The March Madness on Demand player, available in regular and high-quality video, and, with a new "Boss Button" in case he or she comes lurking, created by Dilbert's Scott Adams.
The MMOD Developer Platform, which allows other sites to embed the player.
Mobile alerts via AT&T so you can follow your favorite team.
The offical CBS bracket.
The official CBS brackets on Facebook (membership required).

Here are just a few examples of how other sites are getting in on March Madness fever:

The ESPN tournament challenge sponsored by Sprint, with a $10,000 prize in the offing.
The Bracket Challenge by Citizen Sports on Facebook (membership required), which, at this writing, appears to have more monthly active users than CBS' Facebook bracket. It also offers in conjunction with Sports Illustrated, a Greatest Swimsuit Bracket ever. Synergy, I guess.
The official College Hoops.net bracket.
Bracket Brains, which promises "advanced data analysis to help you build a better bracket."
The Hooters promotion of "National Hooky Day" -- i.e. going to your local bar today and watching b-ball instead of going to work -- at the MSN/Fox Sports site.
The AOL/Fanhouse $10 million bracket challenge, and iPhone app.
Live video feeds at Yahoo Sports, using the NCAA/CBS streams.

The piling on by dozens of Web sites when it comes to March Madness is enough to make you wonder whether next time CBS negotiates for rights to the NCAA Basketball Tournament it should try to get exclusivity on more aspects of it, like the online tournament bracket. (Yeah, like that'll happen, but you get the idea.) In fact, as it was with the Olympics, in which Yahoo Sports got much more traffic than official broadcaster NBC's Olympics site, the same dynamic may hold true here. In a survey conducted by rich media advertising provider Unicast, the site people most plan to use to follow the tournament is ESPN.com at 69 percent, followed by Yahoo (42%), Fox Sports (34%), and only then CBS (29%) and the NCAA (26% ).

On the other hand, the explosive "watercooler effect" that online has had recently on event TV may mean that the rising tide of unbridled online activity around March Madness is what is lifting all boats -- including, of course, viewership of the tourney on CBS, which is still where the big money is.

Previous coverage of March Madness at BNET Media: