Sports Sites Score with NCAA Tourney Contests

Picking the winners has become a big promotional ploy for online sports sites, with significantly bigger prizes than office pools may offer.

ESPN’s Tournament Challenge features a top prize of $10,000 for the grand-prize winner and a second prize of a $5,000 Circuit City gift card and a $500 ESPN Shop card. The ESPN.com contest uses a graduated system of points for correct picks in each successive round of the tournament.

This year, fans can also manage their bracket picks by mobile phone and sign up to receive alerts on game results.

ESPN has also introduced a new site, http://www.ESPNbracketologists.com, providing analysis, simulations and a vehicle for fans to interact with each other.

Essentially, it’s another way to promote the tournament and draw fans into ESPN.com for updates as the tournament proceeds.

“It’s part of our larger strategy to engage fans,” said ESPN spokeswoman Amy Phillips about the tourney contest and the analysis site. “There’s a huge community aspect to it.”

Last year, ESPN.com drew 3.3 million entries for its NCAA Tourney contest.

CBSSports.com, which also uses a graduate point scale, offers a grand prize of a free trip for two to the 2009 Final Four in Detroit, for an estimated prize value of $5,000.

This year, Yahoo Sports is teaming with KFC in its Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick ‘Em Contest to offer $5 million to the fan who fills out a perfect bracket prediction. (That’s up from $1 million last year.)

If no contestant fills out a perfect tourney dance card, the person that scores the highest total wins a $10,000 cash prize.

Yahoo drew 1.5 million competitors for its contest last year.

This time around, Yahoo is teaming with UPS on a Second Chance game, with fans able to create new brackets after the second round of the tournament. If an entrant creates a perfect bracket in that round, the prize is $1 million.

FoxSports.com also is running a tourney contest, College Basketball Bracket Challenge with a 50-inch high definition plasma TV as top prize and three 32-inch HD LCD TVs also in play.

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