CBS SportsLine announced that on the afternoon of March 16, its March Madness on Demand streaming video service was providing more than 268,000 simultaneous streams, setting an Internet record. The operation is part of CBS Digital Media and is providing live streaming of the first 56 games of the 2006 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship.
"What we've done is complement the biggest college sports event of the year with the largest known simultaneous live viewing audience in the history of the Internet for an event of this kind," said Larry Kramer, President of CBS Digital Media.
The operation also reported that since the 2006 NCAA March Madness on Demand began, more than 1.2 million video streams had been served.
The streaming video service is available at NCAASports.com and is offered free of charge for the first time since it began in 2003. It is being sponsored by Courtyard by Marriott, Dell and others including Lowe's, Pontiac and State Farm. CBS SportsLine is partnering with Akamai Technologies and Limelight Networks to provide video bandwidth to support the event.
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