We are eight days away from the start of the 2020 First Four in Dayton, and ten days away from the first chaotic first round games of the 2020 NCAA Tournament, and Turner and CBS are starting to reveal more about their plans for college basketball’s marquee event.
On Monday, Turner and CBS revealed details about the March Madness Live app, and while most of the news is old hat, there are some interesting new developments.
The most noteworthy item is the expansion of the Multigame feature, which will allow fans to watch two games at once in select windows across the tournament. This is accompanied by The Catch-Up, which serves as a brief primer of what you missed in the game before tuning in.
The Multigame option will expand fans’ ability to watch simultaneous live coverage of two games during certain windows of the NCAA Tournament to new platforms, including Amazon Fire TV and Android TV platforms for the first time this year – in addition to existing Multigame functionality on Apple TV. Additionally, new The Catch-Up video powered by AT&T TV will provide users with a succinct summary of any key plays or moments that may have transpired prior to when they started watching live streaming coverage.
Fast Break, the NCAA Tournament’s RedZone-esque show, also returns following its 2018 debut. It will be available during the first four days of tournament coverage from Thursday-Sunday, and will bounce around between games while also providing analysis and highlights. The talent for the show has yet to be anounced.
For the third consecutive year, Fast Break presented by AT&T TV and Nissan will exclusively provide an all-encompassing look at live tournament action from a single viewing location. This live, whip-around coverage will also offer quick turnaround highlights, real-time analysis, social reaction and commentary for all games. Fast Break will be available when there are multiple games being played during the first two rounds of the tournament, Thursday through Sunday, March 19-22. AT&T TV will present Fast Break coverage on Thursday and Saturday, with Nissan serving as sponsor for Friday and Sunday.
March Madness Live will also bring back a variety of bracket-related content, and debuts bracket integration in the app. Notably, there is no mention of VR content in the release, which was a selling point for the NCAA in recent years.
I’ll admit, I’m typically not much of a March Madness app loyalist. I typically go old school with one game on TV, and two games streaming on a laptop, with the fourth game stuck on the old “last channel” (or whatever your remote calls it) of the TV. But the times I’ve used it, the app has been fine, and the multigame feature might nudge me into using it a little more this year.
