Well the contest has closed and the winners were announced. Before I go on with my rant, I do want to congratulate the two winners. Out of all the videos submitted I do actually believe that theirs were in the top 5 for sure. The winner “Captain Kirk” I thought very early on had a strong chance of winning, and I do believe that he was a good choice for the grand prize winner.
But here are my complaints.
The rules stated that the grand prize winner would be chosen by a panel of judges from the top 10 videos with the most votes. Second place would be determined by the video with the most votes.
Well, it seems that for some reason the judges scrubbed ALL the votes resulting in a score of zero for all videos. They then chose the grand prize winner out of ALL videos, not just the top 10. Kirk was somewhere in the mid-teens in terms of his position.
If for some reason they deemed the voting system to be flawed and as a result resent it, then fair enough, but then why was the second grand prize winner chosen based on votes, should he not have also been chosen by the judges review? Perhaps he was, but there is simply nothing stated about this…
I am not at all upset that I didn’t win – to be honest, my video was far from the best, and others deserved to win over mine. My only complaint is the lack of clarity towards how the winners were chosen, seeing as how it is obvious that it was not based on the criteria stated in the official rules.
Many submitters went out of their way to try and promote Lottomax and this contest by means of blog posts, twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, not to mention word of mouth. (I for one am certain that my twitter followers probably got a bit annoyed with me).
Lotto max still got additional exposure by people assuming that votes mattered and spreading the word, but in the end all this time was basically for nothing as the change in rules seems to have made votes irrelevant. (If votes had nothing to do with it, entrants would probably keep their mouths shut as it could create more competition, so the whole angle of votes helped to promote the contest)
I would love to see an official statement from Lottomax as to what has happened and why. Perhaps some transparency in the whole situation will make it seem less like some kind of a scam.
