This year’s version of March Madness Live will feature a sharply heightened emphasis on users’ own personalized brackets and the Capital One-sponsored NCAA March Madness Bracket Challenge. The digital distribution of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, again overseen by Turner Sports, will feature a first-time integration of the bracket challenge onto connected TV platforms and Google Cloud-based matchup analysis to aid user predictions and even make automated picks based on individual preferences. Turner Sports also will expand last year’s introduction of personalized push notifications to connected individual game picks with live game coverage to incorporate Amazon Echo devices. FastBreak, March Madness Live’s live stream whiparound coverage that includes live game look-ins, highlights and real-time analysis, also has expanded from two days last year to the entire first full weekend this year. “The viewership data, not surprisingly, is clear that people who play the (bracket challenge) game watch longer, and we’re doing everything we can to connect those experiences,” said Turner Sports Senior VP/NCAA Digital Hania Poole.
RECORD REACH THIS YEAR: March Madness Live this year will be available on a record 17 distribution platforms, with Turner Sports dropping the Google Daydream VR platform and adding Android TV and Oculus Go. Despite the movement among the VR offerings and industry doubt about the viability of VR overall, Poole said she and Turner Sports remain believers in the technology. “We’re still seeing increased trends of usage and the video quality is absolutely getting better,” she said. “The viewership is still relatively small but the engagement is definitely growing.”
