Rabid fantasy sports fan wins Yahoo!'s March Madness contest for ad agencies
Breathes there a bigger fantasy sports fan than Ravi Patel? "I play fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy-pretty-much-anything I can get my hands on," says Patel, who works as a search planner at Neo@Ogilvy, a digital advertising agency in New York City.
Patel commutes from Philadelphia, where he's a ferocious fan of all Philly pro sports teams—especially the Eagles. His penchant for painting himself in team colors, even at away games, earned him an Eagles Fan of the Year award in 2006. Though he says he's not big on college hoops, Patel entered five contests to pick winners in each bracket of the national college basketball championships, aka March Madness.
Yahoo! sponsored two of those contests—the annual Tourney Pick 'em, which is sponsored by Patel's beloved Yahoo! Fantasy Sports and draws millions ofsports nutseach year, and a smaller version for ad agencies only, which drew 1,200 entrants.
A co-worker told him about Yahoo!'s agency contest, and Patel was especially excited by the prizes—an iPad 3 and a happy hour for 50 people for his agency on Yahoo!'s dime. "I really wanted that iPad," said Patel, who yearned to use it on his commutes, "but winning one seemed too good to be true."
Patel picked different sets of winners for each of his five contests using the same hang-loose approach. "My research was minimal," he said. "It was pretty much reading headlines." He mixed in gut feelings and "trying to predict some cool upsets" to fill out his dozens of brackets.
Patel started out fast in Yahoo!'s agency contest, picking 15 winners in the first 16 games, but then dropped a few and slid back in the rankings. The iPad seemed to be drifting away, but when he checked on the final 8 bracket, he was back near the top. "I thought I might have a shot at this," he says.
When the title game between Kansas and Kentucky rolled around on April 2, Patel was ranked first. He picked Kentucky to win, and his rival picked Kansas. Kentucky led the whole game, but in the last few minutes, Kansas started making a run. Patel got very nervous: "I'm thinking, 'You can't do this to me.'"
They didn't. Patel won the contest convincingly, picking 46 of 63 games correctly, three more than the runner-up. "I'm ecstatic," he said.
In fact, Patel wound up winning three of the five hoops contests he entered—which begs the question, what advice does he have for picking winners?
"Don't stick by your team too much," he says, admitting that sounds weird coming from a fan who paints himself green. "Be objective, have fun with it, and don't do too much research. Half of it is luck, anyway."
— Bob Pickard
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Article source: http://advertising.yahoo.com/blogs/advertising/ravi-patel-neo-ogilvy-knows-pick-em-215240877.html
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