In reflecting on March Madness, it’s clear that trends from across the US show that the use of Internet streaming (especially with the iPad) dropped significantly during the the course of the games. This is not a surprise, as early games are often harder to find on TV because so many are played simultaneously.

Below is an excerpt from a Report Studio analysis from one small MSO site that shows the first weekend of the event had more than three times the second and third weekend of March Madness:

For this operator, all told, 5% of their subscriber base watched some part of the event online, but less than .5% were watching at any one time on the network.

A large service provider reported very similar percentage results for the final game (as reported by Report Studio):

The conclusion to draw from the March Madness and the Super Bowl Streaming events so far seems to be that the harder the content is to access on TV (or the novelty of the event), the more likely it is that consumers will choose the small screen over the large screen.  If it’s easy to see on TV, audiences, it appears, will still watch it there.

This is a topic that I will explore more in my next blog, which takes a look at what a video service is in relationship to devices; I think the definition for consumers of what a video service is has dramatically shifted over the past year.