The American Gaming Association (AGA) reported that over $8.5 billion was gambled on March Madness in 2019 via a combination of illegal and legal bets. 2021 is a new and very different year for the tournament – due to the ongoing global health pandemic and also due to the expansion of the legal sports-betting market in the USA.

College-basketball’s March Madness 2021 has commenced – and due to COVID-19, for the first time in its history the entire tournament is being held in a single state. This year Indiana is hosting all of the March Madness games.

March Madness Key Dates

• Selection Sunday – March 14
• First Four – March 16-17
• First Round – March 18-19
• Second Round – March 20-21
• Sweet 16 – March 25-26
• Elite Eight – March 27-28
• Final Four – April 3
• National Championship – April 5

The National Championship Final itself is set for April 5th, at the Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

March Madness – Betting facts, figures and trends

The latest research and analysis has brought some interesting March Madness sports-betting estimates, facts and figures to light.

Three times as many Americans planned to wager on this year’s March madness via online sportsbooks compared to 2019.

The pandemic is unquestionably a factor in the huge increase of anticipated bettors, with 17.8 million people expected to gamble on March Madness this year compared with 5.8 million people in 2019.  

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Even so, 8.3 million bettors are expected to place a bet at a physical sportsbook, which is up 79% from 2019.

That figure is only expected to grow in the future with 45% of American adults now living in a state with legalized sports betting and more states opening up.

The dramatic growth in the popularity of sports-betting over the course of the last two years can be attributed to the expansion of the legal market, as 73.6 million more Americans in 14 new legal jurisdictions can legally place bets on March Madness this year compared to the 2019 tournament.

A March Madness tournament bracket might be great fun, but it’s worth looking at more traditional wagers at more realistic betting odds on the Money Line, Point Spread and Totals for those hoping to realistically win a few dollars.

There could be a big jump in traditional bets on this year’s tournament compared to 2019, with 30.6 million Americans expected to wager such bets, up from 17.8 million two years ago.

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“We’ve already seen a 200% increase in site searches related to March-Madness betting in 2021 – with sports fans looking for the latest odds & futures for the tournament”  

• Tom Nielsen, CTO at sports odds website Vegas-odds.com 

Other March-Madness facts & figures:

• The odds of picking all 63 March Madness games correctly is 1 in 9.2 quintillions! (That’s 9,200,000,000,000,000,000)
• The longest streak of correct NCAA tournament bracket picks to start the tournament currently stands at an astonishing 49, with an Ohio resident correctly predicting the entire 2019 NCAA tournament into the Sweet 16.
• A report from gaming analysts Eilers & Krejcik estimated that if all 50 U.S. states had legal online sports betting, sportsbooks would handle $15.2 billion in total wagers for March Madness alone, grossing about $1.2 billion of revenue.
• 47.4 million American adults plan to bet on March Madness (that’s more than 20% of the population), about the same number that indicated they would bet on the tournament in 2019.  
• 36.7 million Americans say they will fill out a bracket, down 8 percent from 2019
• 30.6 million Americans expect to place more traditional bets on this year’s tournament, up from 17.8 million in 2019
• Gonzaga University is the betting public’s favorite to win the tournament (17%), followed by Florida State University (11%) and Baylor University (8%).