Clever 'social sweepstakes' for World Series tickets

With the Fall Classic nearly upon us, Major League Baseball and MasterCard are giving away a trip for four to the World Series. Entering the contest is a bit more fun than signing up for some mailing list or applying for a credit card. Instead, MLB is letting baseball fans create their own team tribute video using MLB-supplied highlight footage, music, and the fan's own voice, recorded by calling into an 800 number. Fans can even view each other's tribute videos.

The result is a conceptual mashup of YouTube and some of the best baseball highlights we can remember -- like Kirk Gibson's World Series-winning solo homer in the Tigers' 1984 appearance. Packaged with a great video tutorial with baseball talking head Joe Buck in a candy-like Flash object, this giveaway doesn't feel like you're "applying" or "entering". And that's probably just what MLB wants--for this to be fun. Kudos for making it exactly that.

Tags: baseball, mlb, video, world series, WorldSeries