One man is now $100,000 richer, and it didn’t cost him a penny.
Jordan Poet, a resident of Springfield, Ore., won the grand prize in the free-to-enter Qlik Bracket Challenge after accumulating the most points throughout the recently concluded NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Poet successfully picked Michigan State to beat Duke in the Elite Eight and three of the Final Four teams, as well as national champion Virginia.
“Thanks to Qlik, I’m now able to pay down some debt on our new house and put some retirement plans in place,” said Poet.
Poet eschewed the opportunity to select his beloved Oregon Ducks before the tournament started, and the decision paid off. Literally.
“Normally I would be picking Oregon,” he said, “but I knew from following the season there were better potential champions.”
Based in King of Prussia, Qlik, the only software company that offers an end-to-end data management and analytics platform that is built to transform entire businesses, tendered one of the largest awards for a bracket contest on the market. And unlike many “perfect bracket” challenges, Qlik awarded the $100,000 to the “best bracket” submitted.
Data and analytics are ubiquitous in sports, and Qlik leveraged its Qlik Sense analytics platform to provide the most in-depth access to data on every team in the tournament field to help fans design their best bracket ever.
Through the Qlik Bracket Challenge, Poet and other participants were able to review and compare current season statistics like strength of schedule, performance against ranked teams, and scoring margins with data provided by STATS. This gave participants a full picture of each team’s potential and each individual game for potential upsets and favorites to match their rooting interest. For example, many were surprised by outcomes like 12th-seeded Murray State beating fifth-seeded Marquette, but informed bracket participants who reviewed the data would have confidently picked Murray State.
During the tournament, Qlik also showcased a variety of historical tournament highlights through data storytelling on its https://bracketguru.qlik.com microsite. The microsite leveraged data from throughout the history of the tournament, providing fans with a great mix of content and visuals on past upsets, unique storylines, and a deeper understanding of the tournament through data.
Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, one where everyone can use data to solve their most challenging problems. Only Qlik’s platform brings together all of an organization’s data from any source, enabling people at any skill level to use their curiosity to uncover new insights. Companies use Qlik to see more deeply into customer behavior, reinvent business processes, discover new revenue streams, and balance risk and reward.
Qlik does business in more than 100 countries and serves more than 48,000 customers around the world. Click here to learn more about the company.
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