NEWSWEEK's Sarah Kliff files a nice piece on the business costs of March Madness:
Along with the usual office pools and trash talking over rival
teams, this year's March Madness comes with another major distraction:
free live streaming of every game. For the first time the NCAA has teamed up with the CBS to provide March Madness On-Demand, a completely free Web stream of all 63 basketball
games. Fans are eagerly signing up; fans had registered for 96 percent
of the premium VIP spots--which CBS says will get fans quicker access
to streaming video--by mid-day Wednesday.
Streaming
NCAA games online isn't new; CBS has been doing it since 2003 when they
debuted that year a pay-per-view model. In 2005, they netted about
$250,000 in revenue using that system. This year's free, ad-supported
model, supplemented by premium services, should earn the network "more
than $21 million in total revenue," CBS President Les Moonves
projected during a recent earnings call with analysts. That's despite
the fact that operating costs for March Madness On-Demand have remained
largely flat, according to Moonves.
But CBS's gain may
be corporate America's loss. March Madness is already a big draw in the
workplace; most surveys show that roughly 10 percent of Americans are
interested enough in the tournament to participate in an office pool.
But checking up on pools and touting one's team to a colleague takes
only a few minutes here and there. Full desktop PC access to hours and
hours of back-to-back games could prove a much greater distraction.
READ THE FULL STORY HERE
