The NCAA basketball tournament’s digital hub, March Madness Live, is expanding its reach and offerings this year to center the experience around a user’s own bracket. The app will add integration with Android TV and Oculus Go, increasing the number of supported platforms to 17, and fans will be able to pull up their personal brackets on all connected devices.
All 67 games will be available via March Madness Live, which Turner Sports developed along with the NCAA and CBS Sports. The NFL Red Zone-style Fast Break channel, which offers highlights across all concurrent games, has been expanded throughout the first weekend of games, so the Saturday and Sunday second-round games are also included.
The Bracket Challenge integrates access to live video through each user’s entry. Not surprisingly, fans who submit brackets tend to watch more video, and last year’s tournament saw a seven-percent increase in streaming.
“We’re taking it up a notch,” said Turner’s SVP of NCAA Digital, Hania Poole. “There’s a vested interest in us delivering more features and functionality around the bracket.”
Touts to live streams and highlights will include a user’s predicted winner in the corner. Fans can also view their brackets in augmented reality on iOS devices for a wider view of the whole field.
To help users complete more sophisticated entries, MML has updated its BracketIQ Tools. Fans can choose from more than 20 stats—some traditional and some developed by partner Google Cloud—to guide choices. The app will suggest winners based on the metrics.
“You can specify the stats that you think are important to make your picks,” Poole said.
Intel will again provide its TruView volumetric replays for the Final Four and championship game. Virtual reality will also return with Intel producing 21 games in that format, including the Final Four weekend.
“Every year, I think the video gets better and better in VR,” Poole said. “We have seen growth. We’ve seen more adoption—still a smaller scale than anything else, but important for us to keep trying and innovating where we see an audience.”