NCAA March Madness on Demand, CBS Sportsline’s online coverage of the 2006 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship, served more then 14 million streams of live video and recorded more than 4 million visitors during the first four days of the tournament.
That number of video streams and visitors is believed to have surpassed the total number of streams served and visits recorded for any previous live event in Internet history, according to CBS Sportsline. NASA's online video coverage of the launch and landing of the Space Shuttle Discovery is believed to have held the previous record for largest live Internet event with more than 2.6 million visitors.
NCAA March Madness on Demand by the numbers:
- served more than 14 million streams of live game action
- recorded more than 4 million visitors in first four days
- has a total of 1.15 million registered users
- had 530,000 fans register on Thursday, March 16
- has about 30 thousand international registered users registered
Speaking with “Sports Technology Update” prior to the launch of the service, CBS Sportsline senior vice president and general manager, Stephen Snyder, said the free streaming service planned on having 80Gb to 100Gb of bandwidth. Individual streams would require 400Kb at the most.
According to Snyder, CBS Sportsline contracted with MLB Advanced Media to stream the on-demand service. At some point in the future, CBS Sportsline may bring the servers and streaming capability in house, but for now MLB Advanced Media “are very will equipped for it,” he said.
