A recent Morning Consult survey released by the American Gaming Association found more than 68 million Americans plan to wager a total of roughly $15.5 billion on March Madness, including 21.5 million who plan to bet casually with friends, 31 million who plan to place traditional wagers either online or with a bookie and more than 56 million who plan to play a bracket contest. While contestants less optimistic about winning the tournament can opt for free bracket challenges, others choose to wager money in more traditional ways, including with a bookie or in a sports book in states where sports betting is legal. Since 2000, number-one seeds have won the tournament 16 out of 22 years. Betting on those teams has proved successful in past years. The next best are Alabama (+800), Kansas (+1,000), Purdue (+1,200) and the second-ranked University of California Los Angeles (+1,400). Out of the four number-one seeds in their regions (Alabama, Houston, Kansas and Purdue), Houston has the best chance of winning the tournament, according to FanDuel’s betting lines, which puts its odds at +500, meaning a contestant who bets $100 on Houston would win $500 if they win. That’s worse odds than getting struck by lightning (less than 1 in 1 million, according to the CDC) or being attacked by a shark (1 in 11.5 million). Contestants who know something about basketball have a significantly better chance of winning, but still face absurd odds, at a measly 1 in 120.2 billion.

Those are the odds of making a perfect bracket, if selections are made by a simple coin flip, according to the NCAA. A perfect bracket requires the correct selection of all 67 games over six rounds in the tournament, including four play-in games that determine the make-up of the round of 64. The closest to perfection came in 2019, when a Columbus, Ohio, resident correctly chose the winners of the first 49 games of the tournament, avoiding the dreaded bracket bust into the Sweet 16. There has never been a verified perfect bracket, despite several contestants coming painstakingly close in recent years. Sports Interaction will give the winner of a perfect bracket $1 million, though in the likely event that doesn’t happen, the player with the best bracket will receive $10,000.

A Perfect Game by Reno MacLeod