Back in July when the contest officially ended, the race was still too close to call, with two qualifying lead teams submitting their results in the very last 20 minutes of the competition. The results are finally in, reports the New York Times, with the BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos team netting itself a $1 million prize purse.
With both teams turning in algorithms that had them in a dead mathematical tie, the race essentially came down to a photo finish. Because BellKor's team had posted their findings about 20 minutes ahead of the rival Ensemble team, they took home the prize thanks to the contest rules about time to post breaking any potential ties.
Netflix considers the competition so successful that they're immediately launching a new contest, this time with a larger data set to work from that includes demographic and behavioral data from Netflix users. Unlike the original contest no specific accuracy target is required, with a $500,000 prize going to the leading team in six months' time and another $500,000 to the team at the head of the pack in 18 months.