Ten-X Announces Million-Dollar “Battle of the Bids” Winner in First-Ever Gamified Real Estate Competition

Ten-X – the world's largest online commercial real estate exchange and a CoStar Group brand – today announced the top winner of its first “Battle of the Bids” competition. The grand prize winner, Mike King, a real estate broker at Seattle’s Kidder Mathews, received the $1,000,000 grand prize as well as a donation of $100,000 to a charity of his choice.

The “Battle of the Bids” competition is the first gamification of commercial real estate, bringing together approximately 15,000 commercial real estate owners, buyers and brokers to compete for a total of over $3,000,000 in prizes to most accurately bet the final trade price of real properties on the Ten-X platform. Throughout a total of eight rounds, which began in April, players of the competition gained first-hand experience with the platform by selecting up to ten properties per round to bet on how much the properties would trade for when auctioned. Points were awarded for properties that sold on the Ten-X platform. More points were awarded based on how precise the bet was to the final trade price. The winner was determined by the highest score, indicating the most accurate predictions across all eight rounds.

King, the winner, selected the youth-focused Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, a nonprofit organization committed to helping children reach their potential through professionally supported, one-to-one relationships with mentors to receive the $100,000 donation. Alongside the grand prize and charity donation, Ten-X awarded $100,000 for the competitor with the highest score each round, alongside a number of smaller prizes, for a combined $3,100,000 in donation and prize money. King’s betting was so precise that in addition to the grand prize, he also won the eighth and final round of the competition for a combined $1.3 million in total winnings.

The competition — which saw a total of more than $1.5 billion of properties on the CRE platform during the duration of the competition — required in-depth knowledge of commercial real estate investments, valuations and sales, and winners devoted considerable time and energy into researching historical sales data, monitoring the live online auction of the properties and placing their bets.

“We were thrilled to see such incredible engagement with the ‘Battle of the Bids,’” said Ten-X President Steven Jacobs. “A competition of this scope and nature is only possible because of the robust data and volume of sales on our platform, and we’re excited to see such skillful gameplay throughout the eight rounds. ‘Battle of the Bids’ succeeded in its mission to drive new customers to Ten-X, to put our technology directly in the hands of more real estate professionals and show the industry how much fun trading real estate on the Ten-X platform is.”