Just in case you get stuck working this weekend, or you’re at the office late Monday night, don’t despair. For the first time ever, CBS College Sports Network and the NCAA will broadcast the Final Four over the Internet — also the first time that a major U.S. sporting event championship has been shown live online.

The Final Four will be available via the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player.

CBS and the NCAA have made each stage of the tournament available online with great success. From the First Round through the Elite 8, which sets up the Final Four, there have been 4.33 million total unique visitors to the NCAA March Madness on Demand video player, a 147 percent increase over 2007. (tvover.net)

Not only that, but CBS and the NCAA note that 4.5 million hours of live streaming of video and audio have been consumed in the first eight days of the tournament, surpassing the entire 2007 total.

Since NCAA March Madness on Demand began in 2003, the first 56 games have been available online, but the Final Four has not. By the time that one team walks off the court with the championship — let’s hope it’s UCLA — all 63 games of the tournament will have been broadcast over-the-air and “in the cloud”.

Other posts that may be of interest

• CBS scores big with March Madness on Demand
• CBS, NCAA end “blackout” of tournament games streamed via March Madness on Demand
• Joost makes live-streaming video available, starting with March Madness
• Stream or download more than 200 tennis matches through Wimbledon Live
• Assemble your highlight reel on Veoh’s NCAA Football channel
• What traditional/new media innovation will NBC’s “billion-dollar lab” lead to?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Net TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.