On March 20, people across America tuned in to sports networks to watch March Madness, where audiences are enraptured by the high-stakes athletic show that is put on by the top basketball teams in the nation.
This tournament also continues to be an extremely common event for sports betting, with an estimated $3.1 billion predicted to be bet during this year's March Madness, according to the American Gaming Association.
March Madness is a tournament including 68 college basketball teams from across the country that spans 19 days. Either on paper or through apps, fans fill out brackets where they predict who will win each basketball game. The huge tournament format and the bracket platform are huge draws for casual and hardcore fans of basketball, including plenty of college students from schools in and out of the tournament.
Brackets are a huge part of the buzz that March Madness generates. The American Gaming Association says that as many as 100 million brackets are filled out each year.
The excitement and energy stemming from March Madness also leads to a rise in sports betting. Stephen Shapiro, professor of sport and entertainment management at USC, said March Madness is a perfect setup for gambling due to the amount of games going on at one time. Mobile betting, which allows for in-time wagering, only raises interest, he said.
Mobile betting works through an offering of multiple ways to wager money, including classic money line wagers (betting on which team will win or lose), spread wagers (betting on the point differential at the end of a game) and over/under wagers (betting on player's statlines). All of these methods are available to bettors through apps and websites on their devices.
"It's had a huge impact, because it's eased many barriers to entry," Shapiro said. "With traditional gambling it was only legal in the US and a couple of locations, so you had to go to those locations, and it was a physical sport book that you had to go to."
In 2024, $147.9 billion was wagered on sports according to the American Gaming Association, with 81% of these bets placed online.
Being able to bet on your phone as easily as going on social media or checking for emails makes it much easier to throw down sums of money on sports, said Kevin Hull, head of the sports media major in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
"There's always been addictions to gambling and betting, but now it's so easy, and it can affect so many people, and so many young people as well," Hull said.
A report from Rutgers University in 2023 stated that one-third of bettors from 18-24 were placing bets exclusively online, more than any other age group.
Whether betting habitually or intermittently, there's something in it for everyone, third-year statistics student Nathan Latimer said.
“If we get free on whatever day then maybe, we’ll kind of just sit down for the day and just hang out and watch basketball the entire time," Latimer said. "It’s a good excuse to hang out with everybody.”
Betting on brackets informally has existed for decades, with a Staten Island bar claiming they had the idea all the way back in 1976, putting $10 into a pool to try picking the Final Four teams.
"I think that (March Madness betting) kind of starts from betting pools of like, 'oh, we all enter our brackets and everybody gives $20 to the winner, or winner gets half the money,'" Hunter Johnston, a second-year history student, said. "But then, people get a lot more aggressive."
Johnston has betted in legal states before and believes that March Madness generates enough excitement itself that the audience may not be pulled into betting, as they'd be watching the game despite having no money on the matches.
"I think people that are watching the games and cheering on their brackets would be watching the games regardless," Johnston said.
Aidan Partridge, a first-year economics student, said March Madness could serve as a replacement to betting, seeing the tournament as a cost-free chance to have a stake in a game one wouldn't be interested in otherwise.
“I feel like you get that sort of connection just because of the bracketology and all the social aspects of it,” Partridge said.
Bracketology is the practice or study of predicting the participants in or outcomes of elimination tournaments, which many fans like Partridge and Johnston find interest in.
Sports betting may have similar effects as a bracket – in terms of becoming involved in basketball games – but it ultimately might not be an equal alternative to what March Madness provides through its format and size.
Partridge said participating in March Madness and gambling produces the same feeling.
“I think it’s lightning in a bottle,” Partridge said. “I don’t think it’s something that can be replicated.”