Microsoft a winner in March Madness
Microsoft has secured a deal for its Silverlight technology to power CBS’s live Web site streaming of March Madness. The video quality should be three times greater than last year’s coverage
March Madness is the name given to the NCAA Mens Division 1 basketball tournament featuring the leading college teams. Its appeal stretches beyond hardcore basketball fans thanks to a tradition for friendly office wagers on the outcome. The entire event is televised, but with many games played during the day interest in live online coverage has grown: last year almost five million people watched some games online.
CBS’s coverage, which includes on-demand games, already uses Windows Media Player and that will continue this year. Silverlight is being used for a better video quality option (1.5 mbps per second rather than 550kbps) which, technically accurate or not, will likely be pushed as the ‘high definition’ option.
The two sides aren’t revealing whether any money’s changing hands, though as part of the deal Microsoft is spending a ‘significant’ amount on advertising during the tournament.
Microsoft will be hoping the deal increases the number of computers with Silverlight installed. In recent figures less than one in seven computers in major online countries were running Silverlight compared with rival Adobe Flash which was on virtually every machine.
There were complaints last summer after NBC used Silverlight as the only viewing option for its US-exclusive online coverage of the Beijing Olympics. In that case the exclusivity was pretty limited in practice thanks to the international coverage giving users plenty of other options.
For March Madness, there’s considerable less overseas coverage meaning the CBS site will likely be the only serious option for those wanting to watch games online. There’s also a good chance that office workers will find Silverlight easy to install: as a Microsoft product, many administrators on Windows-based network won’t have set any block on installing it.
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