March Madness streaming on iPad, iPhone for free

Will Brinson

Screen shot 2011 03 04 at 12.18.30 AM March Madness streaming on iPad, iPhone for free

I’ve been searching for a reason why Apple would only give a two-week lead time for the new iPad 2 and maybe this is it: free streaming March Madness!

Okay, that’s highly unlikely (I think), but the news that you can watch the NCAA Tournament in all its glory on both of Apple’s mobile-style is pretty awesome.

Last year, streaming March Madness was available for the relatively low cost of $10, but you could only watch on your iPhone. In 2011, the tournament will be free, and it’s available on both iPad and phones.

Two things. One, as someone who’s watched Sunday Ticket on both the iPad and iPhone, the former is the absolute jam — provided the streaming quality is good (and it should be), games are absolutely worth watching on the iPad.

Secondly, the free part is obviously awesome, but it’s obviously necessary, too. There are just too many options for people to see tons of action on their televisions with both Turner Sports and CBS showing games.

Per Peter Kafka at All Things D, the app will drop on March 10, which leaves plenty of time to download (and pray for any bug fixes) and scope out Selection Sunday and the ridiculous Thursday/Friday action.

Oh, hey, and look who’s a sponsor of this year’s tournament … AT&T! Typically, I would make a joke about service here, but I actually think this presents a pretty interesting opportunity for them. First of all, while overall service coverage from AT&T is substantially worse than Verizon, the speed of their coverage is much better.

Someone needs to take a iPad from each company and film how well they perform side-by-side; if AT&T, as corporate sponsor, stomps on Verizon, well, even Luke Wilson couldn’t screw up that kind of advertising.

March Madness on Demand – [NCAA.com]

What'd you think of this?

Cast My Vote

Other Stories You Might LIke

comment on this story

blog comments powered by Disqus