350,000 Tournament Brackets Already Completed for Sandbox.com's $10 Million "It's Madness!" Challenge.

Sports Editors/College Basketball Writers & Columnists

RESTON, Va.--(BW SportsWire)--March 14, 2000

Duke picked to win the national championship in 28% of brackets

Sandbox.com, the leading provider of interactive games, announced today that it has already received 350,000 entries for "It's Madness!," the company's tournament bracket contest which offers $10 Million to the contestant who picks a perfect bracket. In addition, Sandbox.com's traffic, since the 64 teams were announced Sunday at 6:30 PM EST through Monday, tripled from last week during the same period. This marks over a 1000% increase over last year's traffic during the same time period.

Of the 350,000 brackets already completed, 28% of the contestants have selected Duke to win the national championship, followed by Michigan St. at 26.5%, Stanford at 8.5% and Temple at 7.6%. The most frequent selections to be the final four teams standing in Indianapolis are Duke, Arizona, Michigan St. and Stanford. This combination appeared in 12% of the completed brackets. Every team in the tournament has been picked to win the national championship at least once.

The most popular upset pick of the first round is Hofstra to defeat Oklahoma St. in the East Region. Over 3% of the completed brackets are calling for Hofstra to beat Oklahoma St., which would mark a major tournament upset. The next most popular upset in the first round is UNC Wilmington over Cincinnati, which was selected in 2.6% of the brackets.

Contestants can set up their own pool at Sandbox.com with friends, family and co-workers. Thusfar, the largest individual pool that has been formed, called `Z Pool' and run by commissioner Michael Zerby, has 56 people signed up to compete against one another for fun and prizes. According to Sandbox tracking, 6,785 contestants have registered as Duke fans, leading the pack amongst contestant rooting preferences. New York has the most entrants from any individual state, tallying nearly 10,000 of the 350,000 total contestants. Chicago, however, leads the nation with most contestants from any individual city with over 1,000 entries.

"I couldn't be happier about the numbers we are showing right now," stated Bill Carey, chief operating officer of Sandbox. "The fact that we are giving people a chance to win $10 Million, plus the fact that we will award our top 3,000 members over $500,000 in prizes has generated a ton of excitement and the numbers speak for themselves. And the fun isn't over yet--if we continue at this pace for the next few days we will be head and shoulders above all of our competitors come Thursday when the tournament begins," commented Carey.

About Sandbox.com

Sandbox.com is a leading provider of interactive games with over 40 games including full fantasy sports competitions, salary cap games, sports stock market simulations, pick `em style games, financial stock market simulations, sports and classic arcade games, and free play-for-fun casino games. Sandbox.com maintains a community of over 2.5 million registered members. A combination of creative content, an incentive-based marketing program and leading-edge technologies allows Sandbox to generate high volumes of Web site traffic; build loyal user communities; and develop innovative Internet promotion platforms. Media Metrix recently ranked Sandbox 4th among digital properties and Web sites in terms of duration or 'stickiness,' which measures time spent per unique user per month. Media Metrix also ranked Sandbox 9th in loyalty, which measures total visits per user per month. Sandbox also ranked as the 35th most-trafficked Web site in a recent Nielsen//NetRatings report. Sandbox.com maintains strategic relationships with CNNSI.com, FOXSports.com, USATODAY.com, Lycos, and NBCi, Inc. as well as licensing agreements with the NFLPA, NHLPA and MLBPA.