NEW YORK — Live streaming coverage of the NCAA tournament will extend to 15 platforms this year, including Amazon Alexa devices and Xbox for the first time, making access to March Madness games easier than ever.
“You can go on and say, ‘Alexa, please show me the Syracuse-Duke game,’ and it’ll turn it on to Westwood One that game,” Turner president David Levy said Tuesday.
NCAA March Madness Live, the live streaming suite of products developed by Turner Sports in partnership with CBS and the NCAA, is also available on desktop, Amazon Fire tablets, Amazon Fire TV, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Android handset, Android tablet, Chromecast, Windows 10 mobile and desktop, Roku players and Roku TV models.
The NCAA March Madness Live app will be available starting March 11 on the CBS Sports App, Amazon Alexa devices, the App Store, Roku Channel Store, Windows Store and Google Play among others.
NCAA March Madness Live will offer a temporary preview period giving users access to live game streaming before login is required, and then pay TV subscribers will have unlimited access to live streaming coverage as well as on-the-go access throughout the entire championship across online, mobile, tablets, set-top boxes and smart TVs.
Fans using Apple TV will be able to have access to a newly formatted interactive bracket and be able to offer direct access to live games, previews and highlights.
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For Amazon Alexa devices, the March Madness Alexa skill allows fans to ask March Madness questions about the scores and provide access to play-by-play audio for games provided by Westwood One.
Turner’s iStreamPlanet will for the first time provide the live streaming infrastructure for all games made available through NCAA March Madness Live.
“When we signed this deal back in 2010, no one thought about Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Alexa, Xbox as opportunities to push product on a timely basis through those different platforms,” Levy said. “And this is the perfect product.
“People are consuming this content, and that’s pretty exciting. And so for us, this is all new opportunities to monetize. This is all new opportunities to reach the consumers — and to reach the fans.”
