Method

The NCAA's March Madness is one of the biggest sporting events of the year. Turner Sports wanted to increase engagement for March Madness with a suite of digital products. Working closely with Turner Sports, Method designed the March Madness on Demand (MMOD) products which included a broadband streaming app, iPhone and iPod Touch apps, and for the first time, an iPad app, all free of cost to the user.

March Madness on Demand needed a digital product ecosystem that connected with the broadcast strategy, with all games simultaneously broadcast over multiple networks for the first time ever (CBS, TBS, TNT, and TruTV), as well as augmented the viewing experience through enhanced stats and date, integrated social commentary and interwoven content from social platforms. These goals framed the product design challenge for Method across three unique platforms.

Method and Turner created an overall user experience that provided compelling, additive features without distracting from the core value of MMOD, the live streaming of games. The solution engages users with different interests through multiple viewing modes: video only, full screen, video and stats, video and social. This solution includes a pioneering integration of social commentary into the viewing experience by aggregating views of social activity around the tournament.

The design of the applications also needed to maximize the strength of each platform and user context. To do so, Method customized the user experiences for iPhone and iPad to best suit the needs and contexts of each viewing device. The iPhone app offers features that focus on video, modal views for other content, and alerts. Meanwhile, the iPad application is enhanced to be a primary or companion viewing device, allowing for views that integrate video with statistics and game highlights. This strategy produced tremendous results: the mobile apps had an average of 782,000 unique daily users from March 17-18, and 29% of all streams during the entirety of March Madness were from the iPad and iPhone apps.

Additionally, since MMOD is completely free for users, a sponsorship model was built that integrated all the brands (NCAA, Turner Networks, CBS, and sponsorship partners) into one integrated experience while opening opportunities for valuable new engagement for sponsors with viewers, such as the Coke Zero Social Arena.

Building unprecedented levels of engagement for the duration of the tournament, the success of 2011's MMOD has resulted in unprecedented engagement and use, with an average of 64 minutes of daily streaming from each unique visitor on broadband. Total visits across the platforms increased 60% this year from the last, attracting 41.6 million visits during the 2 week tournament.