FanSection Blog

As I posted earlier this week, we launched the FanSection Bracket Challenge application on Facebook and have seen the number of users grow substantially this week to almost 200,000.  We anticipate those users continuing to grow significantly over the coming weeks building up to Selection Sunday on March 15.

We’re not the only ones preparing for March Madness as CBS recently announced that their streaming service, March Madness On Demand is getting a makeover this year.  Based on the article at NewTeeVee, MMOD users will notice several key enhancements this year:

• High quality streams at 1.5Mbps rather than just the basic one at 550Kbps
• No more throttling or waiting rooms - everyone that wants to watch can watch simultaneously
• Use of the Microsoft Silverlight player
• Bracket view of all games to easily find the ones you want to watch

I’m not sure if the Silverlight player is actually an enhancement, but we’ll see.  It performed fairly well for NBC when they streamed the Olympics last Summer, but it’s hard to surpass the ease of use of Flash players.  The good news is that Silverlight should end up delivering a better picture and the service is once again free this year as it has been the last two.

MMOD users have steadily increased since the launch as a free service in 2006, and it should see significant growth again this year from the 4.8M viewers in 2007.   My forecast is that it will end up with 7M users and over $40M in revenue (compared to the $23M in 2007).  CBS has delivered quality streams for several events this year and should continue to improve on the user experience with the NCAA Tournament.