Innovation That Matters

Trading celebs

Publishing & Media

Celebrity share-trading game, online and on TV: a cool idea from the BBC, bringing in the money.

Opportunities

An excellent traffic-and-awareness building concept for lifestyle portals, TV networks, and entertainment mags all over the world. Except in the US, where you will find a competitor in the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which offers a similar service, and, how clever, syndicates the data collected from the Exchange as market research to entertainment, consumer product and financial institutions, and as original programming to radio, television and print media.

Celebrity share-trading game, online and on TV

Add celebrities to the ever growing list of tradable ‘goods’! The BBC has scored massively with its Celebdaq website: a celebrity share-trading game in which subscribers are given ten thousand pounds (that’s Celebdaq pounds, not real cash). This money can then be used to buy and sell shares in listed celebrities. Every week, the shares pay out a dividend, depending on how much press coverage those celebrities received. Just like in the real world, share prices rise and fall as demand for them changes – so as well as receiving dividends, participants can make money by buying low and selling high. Real time celeb news ticker feeds add to the excitement. By keeping one eye on the market and the other on the entertainment press, the best performing participants could win a real, weekly 100 pound prize. The game now also has its own weekly TV show, which combines entertainment, business and news with the real-time sharing trading in some of the world’s best-known celebrities. Since its launch in July 2002, Celebdaq has signed up 70,000 registered users, and it is the fastest growing website within the BBC network (source: BrandRepublic).

Opportunities

An excellent traffic-and-awareness building concept for lifestyle portals, TV networks, and entertainment mags all over the world. Except in the US, where you will find a competitor in the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which offers a similar service, and, how clever, syndicates the data collected from the Exchange as market research to entertainment, consumer product and financial institutions, and as original programming to radio, television and print media.

Website: www.bbc.co.uk/celebdaq/index.shtml