Americans estimated to wager nearly $3 billion on March Madness

Sports bettors rejoice: one of the biggest events on the athletic calendar is almost here. 

March Madness will kick off next week, and with sports gambling now legal in 38 states and Washington D.C., forecasters are expecting a record-breaking amount of money to be placed legally on this spring’s NCAA basketball tournaments. 

U.S. sports bettors will legally bet $2.72 billion during March Madness this year, according to projections from the American Gaming Association. 

That figure is roughly 2.2 percent of all the money legally wagered across the country in 2023, according to the AGA. 

It’s also a 55 percent increase on the amount gambled on this year’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers in which AGA estimated that $1.5 billion was placed on the big game. 

With all the drama that comes with a 68-team, single-elimination tournament, March Madness has long been extremely popular with sports bettors, something Caesars Sportsbook assistant director of trading Adam Pullen said makes the event attractive from a betting perspective. 

“There are so many close games. Buzzer beaters. You don’t have to be a basketball fan to be interested in the tournament. The layperson,” Pullen said, according to bookies.com. “Everyone knows what March Madness is. It’s part of the fabric of this country. A unique event. And it’s four weeks long. That first Thursday and Friday, you can’t beat the excitement. 

“Being in a sportsbook. It’s just crazy. It can’t be touched. The small schools beat the big schools. It encompasses so much in life. Anybody can win. A No. 1 like Purdue (in 2023) can lose. Those things happen. It just transcends sports.”

But in recent years, betting on March Madness has exploded in popularity.

Betting on College Basketball?

In 2023, a record 68 million Americans bet $15.5 billion on the men’s college basketball tournament, according to estimates from AGA.

That was a massive increase from 2022 when 45 million people bet $3.1 billion on March Madness.

With five more states having legalized sports betting last year’s tournaments, those numbers likely will go even higher in 2024.