Sega Announces SegaNet Bowl

Sega announced today that it will sponsor an online competition for NFL 2K1 dubbed the SegaNet Bowl. The tournament will feature three separate competitions. Walk the Walk allows registered SegaNet customers to enter their names into a drawing where four competitors will be selected to play head-to-head against SegaNet employees each week. The scoring will be based upon a point system where specific actions, such as gaining 100 yards rushing, rewards the player with points. The top four scoring teams at the end of the competition will then go head-to-head in monitored games, and the winner will be crowned the SegaNet Bowl champion. Talk the Talk requires SegaNet customers to submit a 250-word essay outlining exactly why they should be chosen as the winner. The essays in the Talk the Talk contest will be judged by their attitude, humor, and creativity, and the winner will be awarded with four tickets to the Super Bowl and US$4000 in spending money. The third contest, Road to Tampa, is a drawing open to everyone for two tickets to Tampa for the Super Bowl, $2500 in spending money, Sega Dreamcasts, and memberships to SegaNet. Registration for all three contests begins on December 7. Participants must be 18 or older.

When asked if there would be future tournaments featuring other SegaNet titles, Brandon McCormick, a SegaNet spokesperson stated, "Yes, that's something that we'll always look at. One of the goals of SegaNet is to really make it a community. Tournaments, like the SegaNet Bowl, really start building that community and get people who may or may not know each other to compete. Over the next year or so, we are going to be looking at all kinds of features, contests, and tournaments, as well as anything else we can think of to reach this goal."

When asked if the SegaNet Bowl could eventually lead to online leagues, McCormick commented, "That's something that we'll certainly look at for the future. There are certain technical capacities that have to be met in order to do that. For instance, someone has to be able to monitor the games. There also has to be technology embedded within the game to be able to track which team won, which is currently not embedded into NFL 2K1. That's one of the reasons that the contest is set up in the way that it has been."