The men's tournament traditionally makes for a busy time online because there are too many early round games for CBS to televise buzzer to buzzer and most fans don't have easy access to televisions at work.
One measure that fans did watch at work during early rounds was that the CBS "boss button" -- which allows office workers to hide the games under an innocuous spreadsheet -- was clicked more than 2.4 million times in the first two rounds.
When CBS first streamed live NCAA tournament action in 2005, it generated $250,000 in subscription fees. The next year CBS switched to a free, advertising-supported business model that generated $4 million. Last year's tournament revenue hit $10 million. This year, CBS expects online revenue to top $23 million, with most of it falling to the bottom line.
Online is "not a cannibalistic audience" which steals from television ratings, said Jason Kint, senior vice president of CBSSports.com. "It's clear that online is an at-work audience watching on a computer screen, while the audience during prime time is watching on a flat-screen HDTV. So this is all additional audience for us."
The increase was driven in part by CBS' decision to drop online registration and to lift regional blackouts that kept fans from accessing some of the streamed games.
Kint credited fans arriving via Facebook, Sports Illustrated, ESPN and other websites for part of the success: "I don't think we'd be where we are without the program."
No money is changing hands in this experiment, but industry observers say sites that installed the buttons probably demanded reciprocal treatment when they have exclusive online content.
The idea of sharing is part of a broader debate over how much to allow sports fans to access game action and highlight footage online.
The NHL, for example, encourages fans to post mash-ups of hockey highlights on a variety of websites. And early next month, the number of game highlight videos viewed on YouTube's year-old NBA Channel will top 100 million. In contrast, major league baseball and the NFL restrict any online streaming of game-related video to their own websites.
March Madness might prove that it's impossible to wall off major sporting events.
"The Web is a democracy," SI.com Managing Editor Paul Fichtenbaum said. "And if we don't bring the best stuff to our users -- no matter where it happens to land -- then we're not going to get those users."
