The recent NCAA college basketball tournament in the US caused significant spikes in selected sports websites in March 2009, according to The Nielsen Company, which reported increases in both month-over-month (MoM) and year-over-year (YoY) traffic for CBS Sports, ESPN and Yahoo Sports, reports MarketingCharts.

Monitoring traffic to these three major web properties reveals that CBS Sports had 15.1 million unique visitors in March 2009, a 70% spike in activity over February 2009 and a 20% increase over March 2008. ESPN had 19.8 million unique visitors, a 34% MoM increase and a 16% YoY increase. Yahoo Sports had 19.4 million visitors, a 2% MoM increase and a 31% YoY boost.

Video streaming on CBS Sports also saw huge increases during the tournament, with a 287% gain in unique users watching video, Nielsen said. These viewers racked up more than 380 million minutes of viewing time in March, an increase of 4465% over February 2009.

Mobile Sports Gaining Steam

A study from AT&T conducted in connection with its involvement in the live broadcast of "March Madness" games via mobile phones also found that nearly seven in 10 Americans (69%) are keen to watch TV programming live on a handheld mobile device.

The poll also revealed, perhaps not surprisingly, that men are more interested than women in watching sports live on mobile TV. Nearly half (49%) of men would like to watch sports live on a handheld mobile device (vs. 25% of women).

Some 68% men of men and 41% of women say it's important to watch sports live on TV in general, AT&T found.