I firmly believe that the NCAA men's basketball tournament, March Madness, is one of the greatest sporting events of the year: 65 teams; win and move on; lose and go home. This year will offer something extra special: free streaming internet broadcast.

CBS paid $6B for the tournament rights back in 1998. What kind of revenue stream is created by allowing viewers to watch the games for free on the internet? Advertising!

CBS knows that the NCCA tournament has a built-in audience. This audience will watch...this audience will go mad during March trying to watch as many games as possible. Advertisers will pay to be there as well.

How big of a deal is this? According to Larry Page, president of CBS digital media operations, "we've built enough capacity to exceed any other planned event in the history of the Web." For the sake of "research", I'll visit the game stream on Thursday; however, I'm off to watch the real thing on Friday. The Internet: pretty cool.