March Madness Pool at the Office – Winners and Losers

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Category: NCAA Basketball

Created: Wednesday, 09 March 2016 14:45

It’s time of the year again when over 60 million of Americans will be filling out a March Madness Bracket during their work hours as part of an office tournament pool.  This is a concern for some businesses believe that it is a waste of company time and resources. 

In fact, 86% of workers will end up filling out a tournament bracket and 56% of these workers intend on spending at least one hour taking care of their bracket which according to Wallethub.com, a financial tools and informational website, companies in the U.S. will $1.9 billion in unproductive workers during March Madness this year. 

In most cases, companies turn a blind eye to these festivities as it is considered good for moral and bring excitement to the office.  However, not every company will lose productivity during the NCAA Basketball tournament.  Of course, these are mostly companies in Houston, the host city of the Final Four where they expect to make $300 million from over 70,000 fans that will be visiting during the event.

In addition, CBS will once again be covering the tournament and will be making a killing selling advertisement (they made $1.1 billion in 2015).  This year, March Madness will be available to watch on several new platform including Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku TV and of course GameCenter and Google Cast just to name a few.

For the sportsbooks, this time of the year is almost as important as the Super Bowl with an estimated $9 billion in basketball betting action during the tournament.  Las Vegas will be getting around $100 million in March Madness action while the rest will come from other sources such as international sportsbooks, and from bracket tournaments.

Warren Buffett not wanting to be left out of the hype, will again be offering a March Madness Bracket  where the winner(s) will receive $1 million per year for the rest of their life is they can manage to keep a perfect bracket until the Sweet 16.

Unfortunately, it was just a way for Buffett to get some free advertisement as it is only open to employees of Berkshire Hathaway and its subsidiaries.  Obviously, he did not make his money from being stupid since if it was opened to the public he would certainly have a few winners.

Speaking of March Madness Brackets, this year online sportsbooks and entertainment companies are having not one but three March Madness Bracket including one that is free to enter if they have an active betting account.

So to sum it up, yes the companies will be losing a few hours of work from their employees but others will be doing quite well cashing in on the NCAA Basketball tournament.

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