​Just in case you still needed proof that live sports is one of the few bright spots for broadcast ratings, along comes Monday’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Game, which earned CBS the highest overnight ratings for the game in 18 years.

The Duke-Wisconsin matchup drew a 17.1 household rating/27 share in the overnight ratings, and 28.3 million total viewers, which puts the viewer metrics up 33 percent from the year before.

Overall, the entire March Madness tournament set 22-year high ratings numbers across all of the NCAA"s broadcast partners: CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV. The men’s tournament averaged 11.3 million total viewers, up eight percent from 2014, and a 7.8 overnight rating/16 share, a 13 percent rise.

Away from the linear broadcast, digital video broke records, too, on Monday. The “NCAA March Madness Live” platform registered 3.4 million live video streams, a 66 percent jump from the previous year.

Read More: The Wrap

Brief Take: Monday’s game underscores the importance of live sports to broadcast schedules. But the 66 percent jump in live video streaming shows that even the most popular sporting events are vulnerable to the shifts in viewer habits.

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