Warren Buffett's March Madness Bracket Challenge: What Are the Odds?

Every year, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men's basketball tournament whips fans into a frenzy, earning the event the nickname "March Madness." Much of the interest stems from the ever-popular bracket challenge, where groups of individuals pay into a pool and attempt to pick the most winners. Whoever guesses the most games correctly wins the pool.

In 2014, Warren Buffett created a challenge for his Berkshire Hathaway employees: Whoever could correctly predict the outcome of all 67 games of March Madness would win $1 billion. However, as Buffett doubtless knew, the odds of picking a perfect bracket are infinitesimally small.

Understanding the NCAA Bracket

It is estimated that some 68 million American adults wagered on the 2023 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. Many of the pools they participated in reward individuals for the most correct predictions, since predicting the winners of all 63 individual contests is extraordinarily unlikely.

The structure of the NCAA bracket is devised as a "loser-go-home" single-elimination tournament. Two teams play each other, and the winner advances while the loser is eliminated. The bracket consisted of 64 teams from 1985 on; however, the bracket was expanded in 2011 to include several early "play-in" games, and the field was expanded to 68 teams.

Because each team can either win or be immediately eliminated, the NCAA bracket consists of 67 games. At the end of 67 games, 67 teams will have lost and only one team, the NCAA champion, will remain.

What Is Warren Buffett's Bracket Challenge?

In 2014, legendary value investment guru Warren Buffett got in on the March Madness action when his investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, instituted its own bracket challenge. The challenge provided that any perfect-scoring employee—anyone who correctly predicts every game—would win $1 billion. Over time, this was modified to $1 million, every year, for life. The challenge promised smaller payouts for participants who came close.

In 2018, for example, the Berkshire Hathaway March Madness contest resulted in eight high-but-not-perfect scorers, who divided a $100,000 consolation prize, each pocketing $12,500.

What Are the Odds of Winning Buffett's Bracket Challenge?

There are several different ways to calculate the odds of picking a perfect bracket. Some rely more heavily on math, while others allow for some looser assumptions.

Statistically, correctly picking all 67 winners is overwhelmingly unlikely. Consider the following mathematical facts:

• Each game has two possible incomes: Either Team A wins, and Team B loses, or vice versa.
• To calculate the total number of ways that a player may fill out a bracket, you would need to take the total number of possible outcomes for each game (two) and multiply it out 67 times: (2 × 2 × 2…× 2, or 2^67).
• The odds of projecting all 67 winners is one in more than 147 quintillion.

Given how aggressively the odds are stacked against bettors, most bracket challenge participants don't realistically expect to achieve a score of 100%. But many believe that they have a viable chance of predicting the teams that become known as the Sweet 16, which refers to the clubs that linger long enough to participate in the regional semifinal round.

What Are the Odds of Partially Perfect Brackets?

Continuing with the assumption that each game has a 50/50 chance of being predicted correctly, there are still long odds to achieve even partially perfect odds through certain rounds. The table below outlines the odds of guessing all games correctly through each round (assuming a 68-team format in which each play-in game is predicted).

What About a 64-Team Bracket?

In some tournaments, the four play-in games may or may not count toward crafting a perfect bracket. Participants may not be required to submit their brackets until Thursday morning—the full first round of game play begins that afternoon. The good news is this means fewer games to predict; the bad news is there are still very long odds.

Running with the same mathematical assumptions as above, the task is to guess 63 games correctly. This results in a one-in-9.2-quintrillion chance of a perfect bracket. On the plus side, there's a one-in-4.3-billion chance of guessing a perfect full first round after 32 games.

The Bottom Line

For millions of sports fans, filling out NCAA March Madness bracket challenge forms is an annual tradition. One of the biggest March Madness prizes available is at the investment firm Berkshire Hathaway, where Warren Buffett has offered any employee who creates a perfect bracket $1 million a year for life. No one has yet claimed the prize, although some employees with relatively high-scoring brackets have taken home some consolation cash for their efforts.