Uproar put Family Feud on the web. The New York company licensed classic TV game shows and ran them as free online games, along with bingo, trivia and puzzles. In December 1999, 3.6 million people visited its sites in a single month. Its shares already traded in Europe on EASDAQ. In March 2000, at the top of the dot-com market, Uproar sold stock to American investors at $33.88 a share.

Game Shows Without a Studio

Uproar was founded in February 1995 and launched uproar.com in September 1997. Its pitch was time on site. People who played games stayed longer than people who read news, and advertisers paid for that attention. Uproar ran sites in 14 languages and offered PrizePoints, a currency players earned and spent on drawings and prizes. Its operations stretched from the United States to Hungary, Germany and Britain.

Thirty-Three Dollars to Three

Uproar priced its American offering at $33.88 a share in March 2000 and listed on Nasdaq as UPRO. It bought iwin.com that October, and revenue rose to $33.7 million for 2000. Losses were larger, and online ad spending collapsed. The stock fell below $1. In 2001 Vivendi Universal's Flipside unit bought Uproar for $3 a share, about $140 million. Kenneth Cron, Uproar's CEO, took charge of the combined company.

Cover: At the Circus: Trained Pony and Baboon, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a circus act (games and spectacle).