Understanding March Madness and its impact on your company

March 22, 2010Homefield IT

It’s March again, and many hoops fans are once again in a frenzy – creating fantasy basketball drafts, watching streamed basketball games, and researching basketball trends, rumors, and other related information. That’s “March Madness” for you.

Most of the activity of March Madness is internet based, with gambling and betting at an all-time high, especially as the tournament draws to a close with the Elite Eight Teams whittling down to the Final Four. Fans spend a lot of time watching streamed videos of games and gathering information on the tournament online, distracting them from their official duties and potentially wasting company bandwidth.

How much does this impact your company? A lot, says the research. A 2008 Newsweek article reports that the March Madness phenomenon cost a total of $1.7B in lost productivity. And that’s not counting the high bandwidth consumed from all the video streams and the research activities.

In more recent research findings reported by national outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the losses due to March Madness are expected to continue.

“Those who insist there will be no impact are kidding themselves,” says John Challenger, CEO of the Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “It might be a slight drop in output, or it could be slow Internet connections as bandwidth is sapped by employees watching streaming feeds of the games,” he adds.

If you’re concerned about your company’s bandwidth during this period and want to look for ways to better manage it, we’d be happy to discuss a possible roadmap.

Sources:

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/03/17/2048029/college-basketball.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/124404