David Purdum
Multiple Authors
Approximately $3.3 billion is expected to be bet on the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments with U.S. sportsbooks, a slight year-over-year increase, according to an estimate by the American Gaming Association released Friday.
The AGA, a trade group that represents the U.S. casino industry, says betting on the college basketball tournaments with U.S. sportsbooks has increased by 54% over the past three years, based on monthly numbers reported by state gaming regulators. However, that growth is slowing, with this year’s estimate up approximately 6% from last year.
The $3.3 billion figure is nearly double the amount the AGA estimated would be wagered on Super Bowl LX.
“Fans continue to engage with legal, state- and tribal-regulated sports betting in record numbers during one of the biggest moments on the sports calendar,” Bill Miller, president and CEO of the AGA, said in a statement.
The AGA’s estimate is centered on the amount wagered at licensed sportsbooks in the 40 states and District of Colombia that have launched legal betting markets. It does not include the amount traded on college basketball on increasingly popular prediction markets or the amount risked in office bracket pools.
Nearly $1.9 billion was traded on college basketball games in February with leading prediction market Kalshi, an average of $395,000 per game, according to Defirate.com, a site that tracks prediction markets. The Houston-Iowa State game on Feb. 16 generated the most volume on Kalshi, with approximately $12.7 million traded on the Cyclones’ 70-67 win.
Last season, 39 million publicly available men’s and women’s brackets were submitted, according to NCAA.com, including a record 24.4 million men’s brackets in ESPN’s Tournament Challenge.
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