March Madness Myth?

Tuesday begins one of the high holy periods for sports fans....March Madness. For basketball fans all across the US, this is the time of year they've waited for: the NCAA men's basketball tournament. Many of the games leading up to the championship game are played in the afternoon on Thursdays and Fridays. The conventional wisdom is that those fans will be following those games online while working, thus "stealing" from their employers. The outplacement firm of Challenger Gray estimated in 2007 that lost productivity amounted to a staggering $1.2B. Or did it?

Here's how Challenger Gray figures lost productivity during the NCAA basketball tournament.

• 79 million -- Number of Americans who have Internet access at work.
• 22.9 million workers --29% of workers say that they are basketball fans.
• 13.5 minutes -- Average time spent on college basketball websites during tournament.
• 309.3 million minutes -- Time spent on websites during tournament.
• $1.17 billion -- Total lost in productivity (average wage every 13.5 minutes is $3.78).

Sources: Challenger Gray & Christmas using data from MRI CyberStats, ComScore, Hitwise, CBS

All this assumes, of course, that employees had no downtime to begin with, which we know isn't the case. So, watching a game online during work hours is probably replacing shopping online, chatting via IM, or balancing your checkbook. Bottom line: the real number is probably south of $1.2B but greater than zero.

Nevertheless, March Madness is the closest thing America has to the hysteria around the World Cup. I wonder if anyone has done those calculations?