According to research produced by Action Network, it is projected that the bid for a perfect March Madness bracket is set to cost the United States a staggering $5.318,222,550.
Action Network projections show huge money spent to attain perfect March Madness bracket
March Madness is well underway now and all eyes are on how the bracket will play out since the action began on Tuesday with the First Four match-ups in Dayton, Ohio.
While all the pressure is on those teams and players competing in NCAA’s single elimination tournament, with Duke and Arizona among the favourites for glory, for the majority of fans their eyes are completely fixed on pursuing the perfect March Madness bracket.
And a quick google search highlights that’s the case, with plenty of dummy guide articles on how to fill out your March Madness bracket and best tips and predictions on offer.
According to research produced by Action Network, it is projected that the bid for a perfect March Madness bracket is set to cost the United States a staggering $5.318,222,550. When you take into account that the odds of predicting every single result spot on is one in 9.2 quintillion, that fee is absurd.
There has never been a perfect bracket!
In fact, no one has ever successfully perfected the bracket, which isn’t a surprise given those mammoth odds. The data shows that it calculates at $136.36per person that tries to get the better of the bracket.
It’s expected that 39,000,000 basketball, or sport, fans will have filled in at least one bracket – which would come in as the second-most popular major fantasy league game in America. That is almost twice as much as NBA Fantasy with 19,000,000 yearly participants.
NFL Fantasy tops the chart with 49,000,000 participants, while MLB Fantasy brings in 14,000,000 entrants and 7,500,000 in NHL’s equivalent.
The maths on the money spent on March Madness brackets is worked out on three factors – the overall amount wagered on the tournament, bracket pool entry fees and the cost of time it takes for someone to fill out their perfect predictions.
$3.1bn is spent on wagering during the tournament, which is where the majority of the money comes from. There is an average cost of $29 to enter your brackets with – and with the 39,000,000 trying their luck at least once, this adds up to $1,131,000,000 when you multiply the two aforementioned figures.
Finally, to make up the rest of the calculation, it has been calculated that the 39 million people who attempt the never-been-done-before feat lose 45 minutes of their time working out how the bracket will play out.
Doing the maths, a total of 29,250,000 hours is lost to deciding on March Madness brackets in the US. And with the hourly wage on average in the States at $37.17, that adds up to total earnings of $1,087,222,550.
