They both deserved the million in my opinion. The entire competition has been a solo man against the course and suddenly they have to compete against each other with one taking it all? If Isaac had not made it to the rope, the other guy would have won a million. Seems a little unfair and NBC saved themselves a million bucks.

Yea that was what I was thinking as well. Geoff did what no one ever has done before first!!! Yet he gets nothing; that really sucks and has been bothering me for 2 days now.

But the course in general has always been who can complete with the fastest time.

Yeah...I was questioning this at first as well. I assumed Geoff was going to get the mil for being first but he only went first because he was slower on the previous stage. Will the cash prize be back for whoever may be the fastest to finish next year as well?

Not surprised at all to see Issac take it. I thought he'd be the first to complete it ever since his first year on the show. Stage 3 was basically handmade just for him.

They both should have gotten a million. 7 years of not paying out prize money, NBC could have done the right thing and reward each of them.

The competitors should not be competing against each other, just the course, and they both finished it.

yeah, what if only one person made it to round 4? I think they are making up the rules. The other guy should have also gotten 1 million as well for completing the stage before the time.
If NBC wanted to be cheap, they could have made the 1 million payable over 30 years.

If Issac really didn't care about money like he says, he could have split it.

Not really. It was always who could complete the course. Fastest time only came down to whoever didn't complete their section. That left the times to decide who got spots in the next step. I never saw anyone get eliminated from the next challenge if they finished their current challenge.

Multiple people have finished the Japanese course, though I don't believe ever in the same year. I was hoping both would get the cash, but NBC probably didn't budget for two people finishing stage 3 in the same season. My understanding of these game shows is that the grand prize is paid out by insurance taken out by the show. The insurance company calculates the odds of a winner and then charges a premium based on the expected pay out.

Stage 4 could get very rough if four or five people finish it in one year.

What if they simply said you werent allowed to use your feet on that obstacle? Similar to how you cant use your hands on those springy half ball balance things.

When Geoff finished stage 3 I initially thought that the million would go to one of them if the other didnt finish stage 4, or would be split between them if both finished.

this show cost next to nothing to produce. Even giving away 5 million as the final prize is nothing over an entire season. Honestly, they reduce the cost of each show further by having those POM drink sponsors and I'm sure someone is paying each time they show Stacy whatever her last name is.

But networks are greedy even when it comes to hit shows. I am greatly surprised that NBC Universal hasn't done an alternate winter reality show built around their star Ninja Warriors for one of their many cable channels. Before G4 departed, they had started running a couple seasons of off-season Ninja Warrior-related programming.

The whole Mt. Midoriyama course was intended from the start to be a competition with a sole winner. They have always clearly said that, if multiple contestants make it to stage 4 it will be the contestant with the fastest time who is declared the ultimate winner. I think it just throws people off because it's the rare competition that also allows for a lack of a winner. This conditioned people to think completion itself was the ultimate goal since it hadn't happened yet, but stage 4 was always designed to be a final 'showdown' competition. Geoff's timing in pulling this off was just very unfortunate.

Great finale ! Geoff was always one of my fav competitors, so was Issac

Before going into Stage 4, they should have agreed on a 70/30 split assuming both made it up the rope within the time (and maybe they did something like this off camera)

It's definitely good for the show to finally have a winner of the money, otherwise people will start to think NBC will do anything to keep the money out of reach

They will make things much tougher next year but also more athletes will get even more serious knowing it can be done

Or at least give a tiered payout, like Survivor does. Geoff should get some kind of compensation for finishing the course and being a ninja warrior. It's a brutal run and all he gets is a "I completed the course"? NBC makes a ton of money off this show, give some of it back to the competitors.

A lot of game shows have smaller awards for second and third place. For example, first place may be a million dollars, second place a quarter million, and third place a hundred thousand. Why doesn't American Ninja Warrior do something like that?

Is there anywhere you can stream this show legally? I haven't been able to find it anywhere, and since I don't have cable or an antenna, I have to use less-than-legal means to watch it and I would prefer not to do that.

So Ninjagate is a thing, because of course it is:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b00310edf8262f

I have no problem with the faster guy winning the whole prize, but they should both be considered "American Ninja Warriors." But yeah, maybe there should be a $50K prize or such for just completing the course if you don't win the $1 million.

I also don't care that the winner didn't finish the city course (the runner-up did). In Japan the only thing that counts is the equivalent of the Vegas finals, of which the guy did complete every round and he did it the fastest on stage 4. There is a qualifier used to fill out the final field in Japan, but the city stuff (preliminaries, finals) is a construct of the US show in order to make something that should air in 3 or 4 episodes stretch out to 16.

Did they ever mention that there was only one million dollar prize ever before? I dont remember them ever saying that only one person would get the prize, jsut that anyone who made it to the top of stage 4 would get it. I guess I just assumed that anyone that got to the top would get the prize, or at least split it.
And if Geoff Britten was the only one that beat all the courses, he should be the American Ninja Warrior.

In the intros when they promoted the $1 million prize I don't recall them ever mentioned the detail. Maybe it's because it would have tipped off the result if they suddenly started mentioning "in the fastest time" disclaimers. According to the article linked above the contestants all knew about it, but like us didn't pay much attention to it because they never considered that two people could actually complete the course.

Before this year no American had really come close to even beating stage 3. They then went and made all of the courses tougher than ever before. I don't think the producers really planned in advance very well for the possibility that two finishers would occur in the same year.

According to Kent Weed, executive producer: Geoff Britten was given the title of American Ninja Warrior:

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/09/14...warrior-winner

The Huffpost article calling Ninjagate is saying he doesn't get that title either. So whoever is in charge of the show needs to clarify it now. If it is this much of a flustercuck to take care of multiple finishers, it's gonna be a bigger problem when potential competitors stop showing up.

Have their been any interviews with the two guys and them giving their honest thoughts? Or are they just going to go along with whatever NBC says and not bite the hand that feeds (or in that case doesn't feed).

So they might as well only allow city course finishers into Vegas (11 this year), because what would be the point if they couldn't win the $1 million anyway? In which case the entire finale would have been about an hour long since like 6 of those got through stage 1.

I agree that he should have gotten some type of prize but the show has always favored quickest completion time. I'm sure next year will have some contingency for multiple winners.