Computerworld - The NCAA's college hoops tournament may have kicked off only today, but some winners have already been picked, a Web metrics company said.
Hitwise Pty. Ltd. of New York said that as fans and gamblers scrambled to fill out their office pool and tournament bracket sheets online, ESPN.com nipped Yahoo Sports for first place in Web user market share.
According to a two-day measurement on March 12 and 13, ESPN.com's Tournament Challenge site accounted for 32.8% of U.S. visits to sites that offer online tournament brackets. Yahoo Tournament Pick 'em's got 30.4% and CBS Sportsline.com Fantasy Mayhem site had 30%.
EPSN.com also won the average session time game; Its users spent nearly 17 minutes on the site. Yahoo visitors, meanwhile, spent just over 13 minutes on that portal.
Fans were also searching for information to help them complete their brackets in larger numbers than last year, said Hitwise. Searches for "ncaa brackets" were up 38% last week over the week in 2006 before the tournament started.
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