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Men’s basketball tournament ratings continue to rise

Television ratings for the first week of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship reached the highest levels since the early 1990s.

The average ratings to date, which includes coverage of the inaugural “First Four” games last Tuesday and Wednesday, were at 6.2, which marked a 17 percent increase when compared to 2010.

This is the first time the championship has rated this high for the first week since the 1991 and 1993 tournaments.

The ratings for games played on Sunday reached 7.4, which are the highest in 17 years for the first Sunday of the championship.   

This is the first year of the 14-year media rights deal that has the tournament being broadcast collaboratively by Turner Sports and CBS Sports. Games were shown on CBS, TBS, TNT and truTV over the first week of competition.

March Madness on Demand

The total hits for NCAA March Madness on Demand increased 47 percent over the first week of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship.

In total, there were 26.7 million visitors across the NCAA online and mobile platforms, and over 10.3 million total hours of live streaming video of March Madness on Demand were consumed.

Other highlights of the March Madness on Demand product included:

• An average of 2.4 million daily unique visitors on broadband and 702,000 average daily unique users on mobile app.
• March Madness on Demand was the No. 1 free app for both iPhone and iPad last Thursday and Friday in Mac’s App Store.
• Thirty-six percent of all streams for March Madness on Demand on Saturday and Sunday were from the iPad and iPhone apps.
• An average of 92.9 minutes per daily unique visitor was spent streaming March Madness on Demand on broadband last Thursday-Sunday.
• An average of 20.4 minutes per daily unique visitor was spent streaming March Madness on Demand on mobile apps Thursday-Sunday.