2K Sports today announced the top eight qualifiers for the Major League Baseball 2K12 $1 Million Perfect Game Challenge Tournament. The eight finalists have earned a trip to New York City to compete in a live, single-elimination tournament at the MLB Fan Cave on May 9-10 to determine who walks away with the $1 million grand prize and membership in the Perfect Club.
Spike TV will air a half-hour special covering the finals of the Perfect Game Challenge on May 24 at 11:30 PM ET/PT. The show will be hosted by Geoff Keighley of GTTV, and feature special appearances by MLB Network’s Harold Reynolds and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover model Kate Upton. The segment will also include exclusive interviews with the eight finalists as they reflect on their performance in the tournament all the way to the final out and the $1 million check presentation.
The $1 Million Perfect Game Challenge Tournament will conclude a hotly contested competition that saw more than 940,000 perfect game attempts and more than 900 verified perfect games thrown.
‘We wanted to make this year’s Perfect Game Challenge more exciting, more challenging and more engaging with a greater number of our fans, and we’ve been thrilled with the overwhelming level of participation,’ said Jason Argent, vice president of marketing for 2K Sports. ‘Eight different competitors from across America will battle their nerves and each other in order to win the $1 million; it’s going to be intense.’
The eight finalists that will compete for $1 million are Charles Bates, Walter Novack, Christopher Gilmore, Robert Romanowski, Matthew Lein, Kyle Cibrario, William Haff, and Sean Jaquith.
The eight finalists were determined by a dynamic leaderboard ranking the ‘most perfect’ games thrown. 2K Sports used an algorithm to rank individual perfect games based on degree of difficulty (such as the opposing team’s offensive prowess and selected pitcher’s skill) and degree of perfection (number of strikeouts, pitching efficiency).
The MLB Fan Cave is a unique space at 4th Street and Broadway in New York City’s Greenwich Village mixing baseball with music, popular culture, media, interactive technology and art. The MLB Fan Cave also serves as a social media hub for baseball, providing fans with a constant flow of online video and conversation. More than 200 MLB players and celebrities have visited the MLB Fan Cave and created more than 400 online videos at www.mlbfancave.com.
Nine ‘Cave Dwellers’ ‘ superfans who survived a process that began with 22,000 applicants ‘ are watching every single game inside the Fan Cave while chronicling their experience via social media and competing with one another to stay in the Fan Cave through the end of the World Series.