When I started publishing in 95-96, the Superbowl, the World Series, the Olympics, and March Madness all had noticeable effect on my traffic (negative effect). Of the four back then, the Olympics and March Madness seemed to be the worse and were roughly equal in impact. Now my sites pretty much shrug off every one of them
except March Madness... it's an incredible black hole for electrons.
Sports sites see March madness [zdnet.com.com]
