Should be a good summer for wannabe buccaneers. Mark Burnett’s latest unscripted show – Pirate Master, Captain’s Log – premieres on CTV this Thursday at 8 pm ET, bringing a real-life hunt for $1 million in hidden treasure. And yesterday the net bowed an online contest whose top prize is $10,000 in gold.
For the next 14 weeks, players of the interactive game will predict which series contestants will be selected as captain and officers, and which will (metaphorically) walk the plank. Players’ boards will be locked at noon on Thursdays and unlocked the next morning, when they must succeed at a randomly assigned game in order to make new picks and earn more points.
The games include: ‘Third Degree,’ a trivia game with questions based on the previous week’s episode and general pirate knowledge; ‘Rogue Recall,’ a pirate card game in which players turn over one card at a time attempting to find a matching card; ‘Cut Adrift,’ a pirate-themed spin on the Hang-Man game; and ‘Hooligan’s Horde,’ a game in which players must organize coins into rows as they fall into a treasure chest before it overflows.
At the end of the contest, the player with the most points wins $10,000 in gold. There is also a secondary prize of $2,500, plus weekly CTV prize packs, both based on random draws. To deepen engagement, the site contains not only a Pirate Master episode guide and continually refreshed series trivia, but also a full list of players’ scores.
CTV’s online contest was created in association with Toronto-based Mischief Media, an interactive agency that specializes in creating user experiences to build brands.
