As February turns over into March and sports fans shift their attention from Italian snow to American hardwood, many in the industry are curious to see if CBS, in its coverage of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, will take a lesson from NBC-Universal’s coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics. March Madness is the next big must-see network TV sports event, but in this day and age, network TV is just a cog in the multiple platform universe.

The multiple platform concept may evoke images of a confusing train station, but in the sports world, multiple platforms mean TV viewers, unique visitors to Web sites, DVRs, video iPods, and cellular phone downloads.

During the Olympics in Turin, Italy, NBC was able to somewhat successfully finish its failed 1992 “Triplecast” experiment by reeling in viewers to watch the events on four networks – NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, and USA. The difference, of course, was that the coverage was free with basic cable. For the Barcelona ’92 Games, NBC tried utilizing pay-per-view subscriptions. The “Triplecast” was organized in conjunction with Cablevision and sold packages of commercial-free, extensive programming. But viewers were reluctant to pay to see some events when network coverage of others was free of charge, and the plan was a failure.

Why would NBC have taken such a risk? In the early 1990s, pay-per-view was believed to be the next big thing in media technology. Boxing purses were growing thanks to the format, and even the World Wrestling Federation was raking in cash by putting its biggest events on pay-per-view. But these examples turned out to be the exceptions, mostly because boxing and wrestling feature high-profile onetime events.

We all know that media technology has exploded in the years since the Barcelona Olympics, but sports entrepreneurs have only recently begun to understand the potential revenues that the new technologies can bring. Major League Baseball owners were understandably upset when MLB.com lost some $40 million in its first year of operation back in 2000, But nearly six years later, you’d be hard-pressed to find an owner who’s still upset with the site now that it has become a small cash cow.

This year, NBC’s Olympic prime time ratings were below expectations, but Olympic TV viewers in some cases tripled ratings on “NBC’s family of networks” – MSNBC, CNBC, and USA. Good thing, too, because the network announced yesterday that its primetime Olympics coverage ended up averaging 20.2 million viewers per night, a 37% decline from the Salt Lake City games four years ago. Sunday’s closing ceremony drew only 14.8 million viewers and was clobbered by ABC’s finale of “Dancing With the Stars.”

But there was good news for NBC Universal, the Olympics, and sports in general. Internet traffic at NBC’s Olympics site skyrocketed. NBC reported this week that more than 9.1 million visitors downloaded video from the site with users watching more than 125,000 hours of video from the Games. NBC reported more than a 100% increase at the Web site when compared to the 2002 Salt Lake City Games and a 44% increase over the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics.

The NBC Olympics site may have siphoned off some prime time viewers by reporting results in real time and offering a slide show of performances along with videos after each event. But the negative effects were far outweighed by the productivity of the multiple platform attack. Besides the success of NBC’s Olympic site, the network found a lucrative partner in Google.com and its “video store,” which promoted the site and NBC’s coverage while NBC in turn provided Google with pre-event and in-event 15-second previews. And yes, NBC related merchandise was for sale on the site.

This wasn’t the first time Google video was involved with sports broadcasting. Earlier this year, Google cut a deal with the NBA to sell old NBA games at its video site. One of the first available “old” NBA games was Kobe Bryant’s 81-point performance against Toronto on January 22.

MLB.com serves as a news center for fans, offers one-stop shopping for those looking to buy merchandise, and most important, sells games to those who want to watch baseball on the computer. People can also download radio broadcasters or highlights for a fee.

The next big source of money could be cellular phones. The NFL has a deal with Sprint that allows Sprint cellular phone subscribers to buy a package of NFL material, including in-game information and a suite of video highlights once a game is completed.

Surprisingly, American consumers are behind Europeans in this department. European sports fans get most of their news about sports from team and league Web sites – not radio, TV, or newspapers. Sports franchises in the United States, still catching up, are starting to release team news exclusively to team Web sites before notifying reporters. It drives users to the Website, where the team can then advertise Web broadcasts, sell its merchandise, and charge advertisers more based on the increased traffic.

Not only will CBS’s NCAA coverage be extensive, it will be more reliant on new pay technologies than NBC’s Olympics coverage. For instance, Duke fans in Manhattan may not have an opportunity to see the Blue Devils on WCBS Channel 2 on the first Thursday or Friday of the tournament, but that won’t mean those fans will be blacked out. CBSSportsLine.com will feature “outer market” contests on your computer. For the more traditional sports viewer, the satellite service DirecTV has cut a deal with the NCAA and will offer a March Mega Madness package to its subscribers which consists of the CBS feed of every game during the first three rounds of the tournament.

“[CBSSportsLine’s coverage] has been enormously successful because you can literally watch every game from every site on your computer,” Jim Williams, who owns the Washington, DC-based media business LJCLLC Media, said earlier this week. “It has changed sports. Years ago, fans were given only one opportunity to watch a game, now fans have the flexibility to watch all of the games on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Also on the computer, there is a tremendous amount of statistical information in real time that allows you to follow your team and get a better feel of the team. The technology broadens the ability to see more content at a time when it’s more convenient for you to watch it.”

Sports owners have always worried about new technology. Baseball owners failed to embrace radio in the 1930s, fearing that giving games away for free on radio would drive people from the stadium. There was the same fear about TV. But over time, owners have come to realize that the more their teams appear on radio and TV – and now on the Internet – the more people show up to the arena. Today, multiple platforms means multiple revenue streams for networks and owners, and it will forever change the way people watch sports.