March Madness to drum up demand for nearly one million HDTVs
Sure, this year's Super Bowl was said to be responsible for some two million HDTV purchases, but driving another million just a month later isn't anything to sneeze at. According to a new release from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the 2008 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament "will help inspire the purchase of nearly 1 million HDTVs (934,000), which represents slightly more than $1 billion in retail sales." Beyond that, the data also found that over half of existing HDTV-owning sports fans would end up turning their attention to the internet in order to fetch highlights and statistics. Of course, it also discovered that the amount of fans viewing whole games online is on the rise, and considering that The Man will likely have you right where he wants you tomorrow (read: nowhere near a TV), we don't find that surprising at all.
