Mercedes' Super Bowl phone game flops

Mercedes-Benz USA's effort to capitalize on the Super Bowl via a smartphone game stalled out Sunday as too many people tried to play the Mercedes-Benz Last Fan Standing game.

The game, slated to begin at the Super Bowl kickoff time, promised a Mercedes-AMG C43 coupe to the last player able to keep a finger planted on a digital image of the car zooming around his or her phone screen.

"The good news is, the Mercedes-AMG C43 is still in play," the automaker said on its Facebook page late Sunday night. "The bad news is, when you try to achieve a technological first, things can sometimes go wrong. In this case, there were just too many of you."

It's unclear just how many fans registered for the game. Mercedes said on Facebook that every eligible registrant will be entered into a random drawing to pick a winner for the C43 coupe, which starts at $56,895, including shipping. The drawing was expected to occur on Monday and the winner announced in a few days.

"Unfortunately we ran into technical issues and we could not support the number of users trying to play," a Mercedes spokeswoman said in an e-mail. "When we realized that many players were still having issues after the game was relaunched, we decided that rather than keep everyone hanging, we would turn it into a sweepstakes. This way all the enthusiastic fans who registered can have their chance to win the Mercedes-AMG C43 as promised."

Mercedes had successfully built social media buzz for the game. Tweets on Sunday by celebrities such as actor Jamie Foxx, golfer Rickie Fowler and singer Darius Rucker encouraged fans to sign up for the game. Registrants who tweeted about the contest could score a five-minute "time out" to help them win.

Of course, what social media gives, it can take away. After the technical snarl blocked the 6:30 p.m. Eastern start and subsequent attempts to reboot the game, snarky comments poured in on Facebook and Twitter.

"At least funny memes are distracting me from how bad #MBUSA #LastFanStanding is at running a car contest," one Facebook user said.

A Twitter user wrote, "#LastFanStanding players, you didn't even get to play the game; where are you going? 'I'm going to the BMW dealership!'"

Others were more forgiving. Another Facebook user said: "#mercedesbenzusa ignore all the haters. You guys still make killer cars. I'm a fan for life no matter what. Hope you fix the problem cause I'd love to play."