Last year, the NCAA March Madness was available as a paid app for iPhone and iPod touch. Also available this year are free streams of the tournament outside of the U.S.

New features of March Madness on Demand (MMOD) include improved live viewing with better quality and larger streams, a personalizable channel lineup option, and live stats.

“MMOD is the primary online destination for fans of NCAA March Madness,” said Greg Shaheen, Interim Executive Vice President of Championships and Alliances, NCAA.

“The NCAA enters a new dimension with Turner Sports and CBS Sports that provides men’s basketball fans with enhanced features that will further enrich their online and mobile viewing experience.”

Additional features include:

*My Channels- The online, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad apps list all four TV networks: TBS, TNT, truTV and CBS by default. Through My Channels, users can plug in their zip code, select their TV provider and see their channel lineup for every game.

*The Game Center View- Users can follow stats of every team while watching games on TV.

*The March Madness Social Arena- Will allow people to connect to Facebook and NCAA.com and “Like” teams in each round.

The tournament field will be announced on Selection Sunday on March 13 on CBS and the tournament will begin with the First Four airing in primetime on Tuesday, March 15 and Wednesday, March 16 on truTV.

Sports Illustrated will manage and create all editorial content across its platforms, including its magazine, its websites, mobile and the tablet version of the magazine.

Under the new agreement, Turner Sports will be responsible for business and technical operations, ad sales, product management and marketing for SI.com and Golf.com, which will be added to Turner’s portfolio of 19 digital sports and entertainment sites. The two organizations will collaborate on multiplatform sales across their collective properties.

"The Sports Illustrated brand and award winning journalists complement and enhance Turner’s portfolio of sports offerings and reflects our combined commitment to bring fans greater content across a multitude of platforms," said David Levy, president of sales, distribution and sports, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

"The deal also provides greater opportunity for advertisers to expand their reach and activate innovative marketing opportunities to access more potential consumers across multiple platforms. By leveraging Turner’s vast digital sports and entertainment portfolio, we expect to provide additional display, sponsorship and video advertising opportunities for SI.com and Golf.com."

Turner Sports broadcasts the NBA, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, the PGA Championships, and starting next year, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship.
 

Hoops, stock cars, and people named and not named Tiger on the golf course figure prominently in a recently announced deal between Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting and Yahoo. Turner turned away from dealing with another Time Warner web property, AOL, in favor of making Yahoo Sports its partner of choice.

The deal, noted at Broadcasting & Cable, brings Turner’s sports content to Yahoo. Turner will do the heavy lifting on the ad spots available for that content as it is shown on Yahoo, handling video ads along with display and sponsorship advertising.

Yahoo gets to show off what has become an increasingly vital part of its web properties, thanks to what should be impressive and exclusive video from Turner for three popular sports. Over the past year, Yahoo managed to pull off some original sports reporting on running back Reggie Bush and his time at USC, including alleged instances of him receiving additional benefits while wearing the Trojan’s uniform.

Although Yahoo’s future looks a little unclear thanks to the machinations of its investors and the potential of a Microsoft takeover, one might hope the partnership will fuel more sports reporting at the site. The interest in the golf side may suffer a bit as Tiger Woods rehabilitates his ACL instead of hitting powerful drives, but the Nascar and NBA opportunities for advertising could make up for Tiger’s absence from PGA events.