NCAA March Madness Live will provide digital "whip-around" coverage of the first two full days of the 2018 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship, adding a new programming feature to the suite of livestreaming products developed by Turner Sports in partnership with CBS and the NCAA.
Presented by AT&T Inc. and Lowe's Cos. Inc., the new "Fast Break" feature will take users to every tourney game on March 15 and March 16, switching from contest-to-contest with live look-ins, quickly edited highlights, social reaction and commentary. The Fast Break format hearkens back to the days before Turner Broadcasting System Inc.'s Turner Sports joined with CBS Corp.'s CBS Sports in televising all 67 of the tournament games nationally, and the broadcaster would switch from game-to-game during frenetic finishes.
The quick-cutting calls will come from Rich Waltz, who calls college football and basketball for CBS Sports Network; Tony Delk, the former Kentucky player who works for the SEC Network; and Andy Katz, the former ESPN college hoops analyst, who now writes from NCAA.com and contributes to Big Ten Network.
CBS and Turner are about to enter the eighth year of a partnership that tipped off in 2011 under a 14-year, $10.8 billion rights deal and now runs through 2032 due to an eight-year, $8.8 billion extension inked in April 2016. Under the agreement, the 67-game tourney will again air linearly on truTV (US), TNT (US), TBS (US) and CBS (US).
Hania Poole, vice president of business operations and general manager at NCAA Digital, speaking March 6 at March Madness media day, said she believes Fast Break will help NCAA March Madness Live engagement on the first and second full days of the tournament, which are the heaviest usage days for the platform. "The expectation is that people will use Fast Break and then click to the game they're most interested in.”
Laptop and mobile remain the primary vehicles for NCAA March Madness Live, with the latter showing the most growth. Connected devices also continue to ramp in terms of increasing time viewed. This year, NCAA March Madness Live will livestream all 67 games across 16 platforms — the most in the product's history — spanning smartphones, tablets, streaming sticks, streaming players and VR platforms from major brands including Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc. and Roku Inc. Apple TV subscribers will be able to watch three games simultaneously via a special Madness Live app for the platform.
NCAA March Madness Live tallied 98 million live video streams over the course of the 2017 tournament, according to Conviva. Livestreaming was up 33% from 2016 levels. The championship game in which North Carolina defeated Gonzaga scored a record 4.4 million livestreams, the most for the title tilt.
Jon Diament, executive vice president of ad sales for Turner Sports, and John Bogusz, executive vice president for sports ad sales at CBS, said in an interview that inventory in the tournament is 95% sold-out. They noted that 85% of the deals encompass both linear and digital schedules, a slight increase from that ratio for the 2017 tournament.
NCAA Corporate Champions AT&T, Capital One and Coca-Cola are presenting sponsors for NCAA March Madness Live. On mobile, Coca-Cola, Capital One and Buick will sponsor the NCAA March Madness Live App for iOS, while AT&T, Infiniti and Capital One are supporting the Android app. On connected streaming devices, Capital One and AT&T will sponsor the Roku app, AT&T is affixed to the Apple TV app, Acura and AT&T are the sponsors for the Amazon Fire app, and the United States Marine Corps and Wendy's are backing the Xbox app.
