SMARTER STRATEGIES

March Madness: IT Companies Head to the Big Dance

Dennis McCafferty | Date: 03-18-10 | Comments

The NCAA Tournament is giving tech companies the chance to have more than "one shining moment" over the next three weeks.

For hoops fans, there�s good news and bad news when it comes to their favorite sporting event of the year. The good news is that there�s more access now than ever, thanks to expanded online streaming content. Specifically, the NCAA and CBSSports.com are providing NCAA March Madness on Demand this year, providing live video of every single game, as well as online audio feeds from radio broadcasts.

The bad news? Bosses are well aware of this and may not be too thrilled about the situation. One industry study has estimated the value of lost employee productivity due to March Madness at $1.8 billion. Which means some companies are monitoring office computer usage to avoid this.

�Ten years ago, the idea that a �pay-per-view�-level TV event would now be offered for free online would have been unthinkable,� says Mark Nagel, professor of Sport and Entertainment Management at the University of South Carolina (which, unfortunately, didn�t make the Big Dance this year). �But the other side to this is that many companies are implementing �tracking� or �blocking� software that notes where employees surf and block them from restricted content. Tournament pools often involve nearly everyone who works in an office, so this is an interesting dynamic that has emerged within many organizations.�

But it�s not as if the cyber-snoops out there are ruining ALL the fun. Many companies perceive March Madness as a time for employees to bond�and possibly take the concept of "team building" to multiple levels. With this in mind, these following tech solutions and trends have emerged to make this year�s tournament a memorable one:
- Ever wonder how exactly an ex-jock broadcaster knows that�after a game-nailing, last-second three-pointer�the winning team has hit 39 percent of its three-point shots in the last two minutes of its away games all season? Well, it�s not because the broadcaster is a statistical genius. It�s because SportsMedia Technology is feeding it to TV crews in real time. Based in Durham, N.C. (Duke country, of course), SportsMedia is the top provider of all graphics, stats and video-enhancement solutions for CBS Sports, responsible for providing live feeds of scores and stats for all games that will play out over the event�s three weeks. SportsMedia provides CBS with all the stats in real time for all games being played simultaneously so that they have the flexibility to update fans in real time with the most current, accurate information to get the full picture of what's happening with March Madness. The company integrates historic information with real-time in-game stats for players/teams, and feeds it to TV crews often in less than one-tenth of a second with the most telling numerical breakdowns. To ensure 100 percent uptime, the company uses three levels of server redundancy during the tournament. As for offline "people power," the company staffs each game site with two technicians to provide in-person support.
- Also new this year on the entertainment front: AT&T Mobile TV is carrying all tourney games on AT&T phones, and its IPTV service, AT&T U-Verse TV, allows customers to watch up to four games at once via a multiview broadcast. And Englewood Cliffs, N.J.-based LG Electronics is launching the first-ever 3D broadcast of the Final Four games, available in about 100 Cinedigm Certified Digital Cinemas nationwide. It�s also providing this on 3D-enabled screens throughout Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, where the Final Four and championship game will play out on April 3 and April 5.
- Fans are always looking for the inside edge when it comes to predicting game outcomes. That�s how you win all of that office bracket-pick money, after all. To help out, there�s the new Predictalot app from Yahoo. It generates odds for each tournament prediction, from the routine (�Chances that Kansas will make the championship game�) to the offbeat (�Probability that every Final Four team will have a school name that starts with the letter �N��). Also, BracketScience.com is using FileMaker Pro database tools to take the results of every tournament since 1985 to come up with a predictive solution to help fans pick games. Compiling data from 1,600 participating teams, BracketScience can crunch numbers on everything relating to historical conference performance, coaching experience, scoring averages, bench play, venues and more.
- Bloggers are providing the equivalent of a full-court press on tournament coverage. In addition to those supplied by newspaper sites and top sports online destinations such as ESPN.com, SBNation.com has no less than 80 bloggers devoted strictly to the games, including �The Smoking Musket� (for you West Virginia fans out there), �Buckeye Battle Cry� (Ohio State) and �Rock Chalk Talk� (Kansas). Sample prognostication from the site: Lehigh has a serious shot at beating overall No. 1 Kansas. You heard it here first.