54% of Online March Madness Fans Plan to Watch Games Live

Survey Reveals ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports as primary online destinations for tournament coverage

March 10, 2010 -- With basketball season heating up towards the March 16th start of March Madness, Unicast today announced the results of a national survey identifying the preferences and activities of online NCAA BasketballTournament followers.

1,062 adults were polled for Unicast’s 2010 NCAA Basketball Tournament Fever Survey, which found that 83% of March Madness fans will watch coverage on TV, 44% will go online and just 10% will use a mobile device.

Of the online and mobile fans following the NCAA Tournament coverage:
· 69% plan to visit ESPN.com and 42% Yahoo! Sports
· CBSSports.com, the official broadcaster, came in at 29%, just slightly ahead of the NCAA at 26%
· Online newspapers and magazines barely beat social networks, 20% vs.18%

According to Unicast’s 2010 Basketball Fever Survey, the most popular activities for online March Madness followers[EB1] consist of the following:
· 58% Monitor scores
· 54% Watch games live
· 53% Check the status of brackets
· 49% Watch game highlight
· 42% Fill out brackets/participate in a pool

“On the heels of the extensive online coverage of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament offers online publishers another premium sporting event that will generate high traffic from consumers looking to follow the tournament outside their living rooms,” said Bryan Hjelm, VP of Marketing for Unicast. Unicast is a leader in online interactive rich media and video advertising management and services solutions for the world’s top publishers, brands and agencies.

“Digital innovations like iPhone apps, online bracket tools and streaming video are bringing basketball fever to a growing online audience of fans,” Hjelm continued. “Sites like ESPN.com and Yahoo! Sports will dominate traffic due to their inherent sports fan user base, which make them prime real estate this month for marketers targeting the typical visitor – men aged 18 to 35.”

The survey found that men represented 65% of March Madness fans, and 50% of all fans with incomes of $75,000 or higher plan to go online for coverage.

The Unicast 2010 National Basketball Fever Survey was conducted online March 4-7 by the polling company™, inc.1,062 Americans age 18+ were queried.

A full report of the findings is available here: http://www.unicast.com/Unicast_NCAA_Basketball_Survey.pdf.

Source: Unicast