March Madness Live Unveils New Features for 2022 Tournament

March Madness
(Image credit: NCAA)

NCAA March Madness Live—the live streaming and second screen destination for the NCAA Men’s Tournament—is offering several new ways to watch and engage with all the action from the 2022 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship this year. The updated platform experience will include the debut of a new multigame viewing feature across select connected devices. 

NCAA March Madness Live is managed by Turner Sports in partnership with the NCAA and CBS Sports and is available to download across 18 mobile and connected devices including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, Xbox, Google TV and select LG Smart TV devices.

New this year is a Multi-Game Viewing option, which allows fans to watch up to two games simultaneously, providing users a live look-in to a second game without audio. Multigame viewing is available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and Xbox One. This feature will join the picture-in-picture option (available on mobile, desktop and tablet), which allows users to navigate through the MML app while watching a game in real-time.

NCAA March Madness Live will also introduce Starting Lineup Challenge, a new interactive experience, developed in partnership with SharpLink Gaming. To play, fans are given a budget to pick a lineup of five teams before the start of the Tournament. Those teams then gain value by winning games and conversely stop gaining value when they lose. After every round, users can buy and sell teams to tweak their lineups or hold the teams they currently own to earn loyalty points. At the end of the Tournament, the lineup with the highest value wins.

Capital One NCAA March Madness Men’s Bracket Challenge will add a new feature that reminds users of the outcomes they predicted so that they know which results to root for in anticipation of winning their Bracket Challenge.

NCAA March Madness Live will once again feature Matchup Analysis, allowing fans to choose from over 20 stats to personalize their bracket picking experience as part of Bracket IQ presented by Invesco QQQ. Fans will also gain extra insight with Path to the Championship, which lets fans calculate possible Tournament outcomes based on remaining games in the bracket, giving users a visualization of their best possible ranking. Path to the Championship will be available at the start of "Sweet Sixteen."

Fast Break presented by AT&T 5G and Nissan, will now feature enhanced analytics powered by Second Spectrum, part of the Genius Sports family, that will breakdown gameplay stats and augment video with graphic overlays detailing the most critical data points. This live, whip-around coverage will also offer quick turnaround highlights, real-time analysis by industry stars, social reaction and commentary for all games.

Game Center, the central hub of NCAA March Madness Live, will be featured on all connected devices and include Condensed Games presented by AT&T 5G to spotlight the most important moments of live game action. To fuel engagement and connection with users, Game Center will feature the Madness Feed, powered by LiveLike, to offer Tournament updates, interactive polls and quizzes. The feed will be updated during the busiest rounds of the Tournament to create a unique experience alongside video viewing.

Turner Sports and CBS Sports will provide live coverage of all 67 games from the 2022 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship on TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV, and via NCAA March Madness Live. Additionally, Turner Sports’ Bleacher Report and CBS Sports will provide coverage of the games across their respective social media platforms and apps, redirecting fans to watch games live on NCAA March Madness Live and the four networks.

Fans can also access all Tournament games via live streaming on TBS, CBS, TNT and truTV’s digital platforms, as well as participating TV provider websites and apps. The CBS telecast can be viewed via the web and on mobile devices with no authentication required and via Paramount+ on connected devices.

Tom Butts

Tom has covered the broadcast technology market for the past 25 years, including three years handling member communications for the National Association of Broadcasters followed by a year as editor of Video Technology News and DTV Business executive newsletters for Phillips Publishing. In 1999 he launched digitalbroadcasting.com for internet B2B portal Verticalnet. He is also a charter member of the CTA's Academy of Digital TV Pioneers. Since 2001, he has been editor-in-chief of TV Tech (www.tvtech.com), the leading source of news and information on broadcast and related media technology and is a frequent contributor and moderator to the brand’s Tech Leadership events.