Burger King Corporation today announced that Matthew Carpenter, a twenty-seven-year-old “Lord of the Rings” fan and Burger King brand loyalist from Allison Park, Pennsylvania, is the grand prize winner of its Burger King/Lord of the Rings “Search the Kingdom” in-restaurant to online sweepstakes.

Carpenter used his “Lord of the Rings” knowledge to correctly answer ten online riddles printed on bags and trayliners at participating Burger King restaurants, then entering them on the Burger King web site. His name was randomly selected from the more than 17,900 entries received.

As the grand prize winner, Carpenter and his wife, Heather, enjoyed a four-day/three-night trip for two to New York, New York, for a special screening of the Lord of the Rings “The Fellowship of the Ring” film on December 13, 2001. The prize package, valued at about $7,000, includes round trip travel, accommodations, limousine service to and from the screening, tickets to the screening, and $1,000 spending money.

Burger King Corporation also randomly awarded other coveted Lord of the Rings prizes to winners including signed movie posters, movie T-shirts, soft-cover editions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, soundtrack CDs, and hats.

“We are very pleased with the success we had with this sweepstakes,” said Hal Rossiter, senior director of USA interactive marketing for Burger King Corporation. “As a result of our tie-in with the Lord of the Rings properties, we have also seen unprecedented web site traffic, with 4.5 million hits recorded on our site, www.LOTR.bk.com, over a
fourteen-day period.”