March Madness Spikes Site Visits

With March Madness well underway Neilsen//NetRatings reported spiked daily traffic to sports-related Web sites. On the first day of March Madness traffic saw a 21 percent growth-rate to 9.7 million unique visitors (March 15, 2006 – March 16, 2006). Live streams and statistics are most likely the lure considering the interest residing on who wins and loses each game and those popular brackets to go along with the tournament.

Leading the pack, CBS SportsLine.com Network saw an 84 percent increase to .6 million unique visitors. Recent Web ratings report people were more likely to visit such sites that offered pre-registration before day one of the basketball tournament.

Whistle While You Work
In accordance to the increased traffic, statistics show that people are mostly visiting the NCAA sports sites while at work. Since most games air during the day individuals are logging on to view the live broadcasts—traffic rising to nearly 5.9 million unique visitors on March 16th versus 4.8 at home. CBS SportsLine.comNetwork of sites drew in 2.5 million unique visitors versus 1.3 million at home.