Not All Fun and Games

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Satisfying User Expectations

Companies seeking to market their brands online through interactive promotions like fantasy sports or stock-picking contests need to come to terms with their users' expectations, says Henry Jenkins, co-director of the comparative media studies department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brands might be looking to drive traffic to their Web sites, but users see themselves as more than a click; they consider themselves participants and feel partial ownership of the experience. "If you treat this as just another kind of coupon, you're going to lose in the end because you're not taking it seriously enough," says Jenkins, who has written several books about online life.

That's a different approach from CNBC and TheStreet.com, both of which disappointed participants who felt left out of the loop while the stock-picking contests' problems were investigated. Several finalists in CNBC's contest told BusinessWeek they had complained to the financial news channel about suspicious trading activity by other contestants but did not feel their complaints were being taken seriously (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/7/07, "CNBC's Easy Money"). On May 30, five days after the end of the final round, CNBC announced it was investigating "unusual trading" by some finalists; the contest's official Web site has not been updated since.

Second Try

As for TheStreet.com, editor-in-chief David Morrow's announcement was followed by the launch of a new version of the game in mid-June. Beat the Street 2.0 would feature "additional safeguards to help level the playing field for all contestants," Morrow wrote. Says Jenkins: "People will forgive you if you acknowledge a mistake and reach out to make it better as quickly as possible."

Morrow didn't return telephone or e-mail messages seeking comment, and CNBC declined to make Chief Executive Mark Hoffman or Tom Clendenin, its vice-president of marketing, available for an interview. But the channel views the Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge as an "extraordinary success," spokesman Kevin Goldman says. "There was a significant increase in [page views] for the rest of the site, not just contest-related pages. And there is a sustained increase after the contest is over," he says.

The online forum dedicated to Beat the Street at Stockpickr.com, a site affiliated with TheStreet.com, has buzzed in recent days with rumors that the game's latest iteration is suffering from problems similar to those faced by the last version.

Switching Teams

"The communication has been poor. They haven't really told us anything," says John Chalekson, a contestant in both Beat the Street contests from California who has been active in discussing the game's problems on Stockpickr.com message boards. At ESPN—although officials estimate the fantasy baseball game saw an eightfold increase in users after it became free to play this year—echoes of discontent have proliferated online.

Like many others, Furdell, the programmer and longtime fantasy player, turned to his blog to express his frustration with the ESPN game's flaws. He joined a fantasy baseball Internet message board to commiserate with fellow users. And he says that despite ESPN's response—which he ultimately found vague—and its promise of free access to premium content for all fantasy players, he and his friends will likely turn to a competitor for fantasy baseball next year. After being unable to tweak his team for much of the first two weeks of the season, Furdell quit. "All in all, it's been very disappointing," he says.

See BusinessWeek's slide show for a timeline of key events surrounding CNBC's Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge.

Catts is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.