Additionally, video streaming on CBS Sports saw massive gains during the tournament, with nearly a 300% gain in unique users watching video. Those viewers racked up more than 380 million minutes of viewing time in March.

“The NCAA Tournament is very attractive to sports marketers even in tough economic times,” said Tom Ziangas, SVP for Nielsen Sports. “The games playing out over several weeks make it a sort of mini-series for viewers. There’s always some unexpected drama or Cinderalla story – like Davidson College last year – that makes March Madness a compelling reality show as well as a prime sporting event.”

In 2008, the tournament reached nearly 100 million viewers in the US, with basketball hotbed Louisville, KY, delivering the highest ratings for a local market in the last five years.

Most Avg. Viewers, NCAA Championship Game (millions)

1979 – Mich St. vs. Ind. St. – 35.1
1992 – Duke vs. Michigan – 34.3
1993 – UNC vs. Michigan – 32.9
1994 – Arkansas vs Duke – 32.7
1983 – NC St. vs. Houston – 32.1

Top Local Market Rating, NCAA Tournament 5-year Avg.

Louisville – 19.0%
Raleigh-Durham – 13.0%
Memphis – 12.9%
Cincinnati – 12.9%
Columbus – 12.7%

March Madness On The Web

ESPN and Yahoo! were the two most-visited sports sites last March with 19.8 and 19.4 million unique users, respectively. Traffic on the CBS Sports web brand shot up 59 percent in March 2008 over the previous month. Online buzz spiked dramatically in March for last year’s Cinderella team, Davidson College. This year, there’s an additional mobile phone angle as CBS March Madness On-Demand is now available via an iPhone application as well as the desktop.

Download the Nielsen’s Guide To March Madness.

Top 5 U.S. Sports Websites: November 2008

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in USA Today.

Sports-related websites in the U.S. drew a total unique audience of 77.5 million visitors in September.

View complete data on the top five sports websites.

The Beijing Olympics and the start of fall football season may have had something to do with the spike in traffic, Jon Gibs, vice president, media analytics, Nielsen Online, noted.

“With broad interest in the Olympics, and the ramp up of the college and professional football seasons, August was a busy month for online sports fans,” Gibs said.  “The Web offered 24/7 access to news, results and video, and fans demonstrated a healthy appetite for information about their favorite athletes and teams.”

Overall, unique traffic to sports sites from workplaces grew from 33.4 million unique visitors in August 2007 to 42.3 million this August.

Working women made up a significant portion of that traffic, according to Nielsen.  The number of female unique visitors who visited sports-related websites from work in August grew by 37% — from 12 million in August 2007 to 16.4 million this August.  In comparison, sports sites drew 25.8 million male unique visitors this August — up by just 21% from 21.4 million visitors in August 2007.

Yahoo! Sports was the most popular online sports destination, attracting 18.7 million unique visitors at workplaces in August — a 112% increase over traffic to the site last August.  ESPN and FOX Sports on MSN rounded out the top three, with 11.9 million and 7.7 million unique visitors, respectively, according to Nielsen. 

NBC’s custom website, NBC Olympics, also attracted significant workplace traffic in August, drawing 13.8 million unique visitors — or 20% of the active at work Web population. 

Among the top ten sites, Fantasy Sports Ventures Network — up 285% over August 2007 — showed the largest growth in unique workplace visitors.

View the full press release.

Read coverage of Nielsen’s findings in The Vancouver Sun.