ESPN.com Garners Record 830,000 Sign-Ups for ESPN's Tournament Challenges; Site Sets Single-Day Record With 62 Million Page Views.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 16, 2001

ESPN.com, the leading sports site, generated more than 830,000 sign-ups for its sixth annual ESPN Tournament Challenges, the free contests challenging users to pick the winners of each game throughout the NCAA Division I college basketball tournaments. ESPN.com is part of the Walt Disney Internet Group (NYSE:DIG).

As tournament action began on Thursday, ESPN.com registered a record 62 million page views, a 62% increase from a year ago. The site also recorded 7 million visits on Thursday, topping the previous high for 2001, 4.2 million visits recorded on February 22, by 65%.

ESPN Men's Tournament Challenge highlights:

-- At its busiest, the Men's Tournament Challenge was registering more than 330
entries per minute and more than 17,000 per hour;

-- Of the four No. 1 seeds, Duke was chosen by 43% of the registrants to win
the championship, while 13% chose Stanford, 6% selected Michigan State and 5%
selected Illinois;

-- Teams that received the fewest number of championship votes were Southern
Utah with 0.0019033%, George Mason with .00210614% and Iona with 0.003074%;

-- Of the major upsets that occurred during yesterday's opening round, just
.84% picked Hampton to defeat Iowa State, and only 6.93% chose Kent State over
Indiana;

-- At the end of yesterday's action, four Tournament Challenge entries ended
with a perfect 16-for-16 record.

ESPN.com, the leading sports Web site, is part of the Walt Disney Internet Group (NYSE:DIG). Walt Disney Internet Group manages many of the most popular Web sites and services, including Disney.com, ESPN.com, ABC.com and ABCNEWS.com. Additional properties include Family.com, Mr.Showbiz, Movies.com, Wall of Sound, DisneyAuctions.com, DisneyStore.com, DisneyVacations.com, Soccernet.com and NFL.com. Walt Disney Internet Group also produces Enhanced TV telecasts in conjunction with select ABC Television and ESPN programming and includes the catalog operations of The Walt Disney Company and 19 Disney-branded international properties. Steve Bornstein is the chairman of Walt Disney Internet Group, which is headquartered in North Hollywood, CA, and has operations in Bristol, CT; Seattle; New York; and London.