March Madness: 68 million Americans plan to bet on this year’s NCAA college basketball tournament
- Finance
- March 15, 2023
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A growing number of sports fans are planning to try their luck by betting on the NCAA’s annual March Madness college basketball tournament, which kicked off this week.
About 68 million Americans will place a bet on the games, up from 45 million in 2022, the American Gaming Association predicted. Of that number, 31 million plan to bet online, at a sportsbook or at a bookmaker, while 1.5 million plan to bet casually with friends, according to the study. About 56 Americans plan to fill out a bracket. Alabama, Gonzaga, Kentucky, Texas A&M and UCLA are this year’s favorites to win. But the AGA expects total bets on the tournament to fall to $15.5 billion, down from $16 billion a year ago.
The Gambling Federation based its estimates on an online survey of 2,200 adults conducted earlier this month. For comparison, an estimated 50 million placed a bet on Super Bowl LVII in February, according to the federation.
The increase in people playing at March Madness comes as more states have legalized online sports betting since last year’s competition, the trade group said. Sports betting is now legal for more than half of all US adults, American Gaming President Bill Miller said in a statement.
Legal in 33 states
Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts and Ohio all legalized online sports betting in the last year, bringing the statewide total to 33 states, and the states of Washington, DC, began legalizing online sports betting four years ago after a colonel’s ruling The US Court of Justice in 2018 had struck down a federal law excluding gambling on football, basketball, baseball and other sports. States where sports betting is legal have reported millions of dollars in additional tax revenue, according to gambling associations.
In a decades-long tradition surrounding March Madness, Americans fill in parentheses as they try to guess which team will emerge victorious in a three-week gauntlet of 67 televised games. Fans typically compete for cash prizes organized by their employer through an office pool, or a friendly bet with family and friends.
WNBA superstar A’ja Wilson encourages completion of NCAA men’s and women’s brackets 05:20
DraftKings, FanDuel and Caesars Sportsbook have emerged as heavyweights in the sports betting world, which is on track to become a $167 billion industry by 2029, according to Data Bridge market research.
“Anybody filling out a bracket should have fun, look at each team and pick their head, not over it,” Jay Ginsbach, a senior sports betting analyst at Forbes SportsMoney, told CBS News.
It almost goes without saying that almost everyone who places a bet this year is bound to lose money. Employers could also be losers: the tournament will collectively cost companies more than $17 billion in lost productivity as workers tune in to the games, recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated this week.
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Christopher J Brooks
