March Madness Bracket Pools: Fun or Gambling?

Every March, an ordinary workplace can turn into a scoreboard. Someone prints the bracket, a few coworkers add their names and a few dollars, and for weeks people check results between meetings. That is a March Madness bracket pool, and it is a form of betting that many people join without thinking of themselves as gamblers. This article looks at what surveys say about who plays in bracket pools, why they join, how they pick, and how they feel about whether it counts as gambling. It also covers what researchers and public-health groups say about the risks. The pool is as much a social ritual as a wager, which is why its place in everyday culture is so hard to pin down. It includes one clearly labeled hypothetical scenario, no invented real people and no picks, because a bracket pool is described here as culture, not as a way to win.

What Is a March Madness Bracket Pool?

The NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, known as March Madness, are elimination tournaments that crown a national champion each spring. In a bracket pool, a group of people each predict the winners of the games, and the person whose bracket scores best wins. Some pools are for bragging rights alone. In others each player pays an entry fee that goes into a prize. The format changes from group to group, and so do the stakes, which is one reason the activity is so hard to measure.

Surveys suggest it is widespread. In a nationwide AP-NORC poll of 1,112 adults conducted February 6-10, 2025, 28% said they fill out a men’s or women’s tournament bracket at least some years, whether through formal or informal pools. About a quarter fill out a men’s bracket every year or some years, and 16% do so for the women’s tournament. Men were more likely than women to join: 35% of men said they take part in men’s tournament pools at least some years, compared with 19% of women.

An earlier industry-commissioned survey put numbers on the money. The Mellman Group surveyed 1,501 adults for the American Gaming Association in early 2018 and estimated that about 24 million people filled out nearly 60 million entries in paid NCAA pools and spent over $2.6 billion on entry fees. These are survey-based estimates from a gambling trade group, so they show scale rather than exact totals. Whether pools like these are legal, and under what conditions, varies by state, and nothing here is a recommendation to join one.

How People Actually Play and Why They Join

A hypothetical office pool

Imagine a hypothetical office where a coworker, call him Coworker A, sends around a bracket the week before the tournament. In this scenario twenty colleagues each put in a few dollars. Most of them know little about college basketball, and one picks winners by mascot while another goes with the school she graduated from. By the second round several brackets are already wrecked, yet people keep checking the standings, trading jokes and asking who is still alive. The scenario describes no real workplace and predicts nothing. It shows how a small pool can turn a sport many people barely follow into a shared topic of conversation.

Who joins and why

The AP-NORC poll found that younger adults were more likely to take part, with 30% of those under 45 filling out a men’s bracket at least some years compared with 23% of older adults. The same poll found that 37% of adults frequently or occasionally bet on sports. About 3 in 10 people who fill out brackets cited bragging rights or the chance to win money as a major reason, and about 2 in 10 cited going along with others or showing school spirit. The 2018 industry survey pointed the same way: 63% of NCAA pool participants called it the most important or a very important reason that pools make sports more fun to watch, and 62% gave the same weight to enjoying the camaraderie of friends, family or colleagues.

How people pick

A 2019 YouGov survey asked adults who planned to enter a pool how they chose. Among them, 45% pointed to their own knowledge of college basketball, 41% to the team they like best, 26% to expert advice and 24% to picking at random, and respondents could choose more than one answer. YouGov noted that fewer than half were choosing with any knowledge of the sport. Among those planning to enter a pool, 60% said they would do so with friends or family and 34% with coworkers.

How much money is involved

The same YouGov survey found that 19% of Americans planned to put any money on the tournament. Of those, three in four said they would wager less than $50, 16% said between $50 and $100, and 8% said more than $100. For most players the stakes are small, though a survey of intentions in one year cannot show what individuals actually spend or how the money feels to them, and it describes one year of one survey.

What Is Really Going On: A Social Ritual with Money Attached

The surveys point to a simple explanation. Many people join for the people, not the payout. The pool gives a group a shared game with a clear start, daily updates and a winner, and an entry fee, where there is one, adds a stake. That helps explain why participants in the 2018 survey stressed fun and camaraderie.

Knowledge matters less than it might seem. Because many entrants pick by team loyalty or at random, knowledge is not a requirement for taking part, and casual fans sit alongside experts. The YouGov finding that fewer than half of entrants relied on any basketball knowledge fits that picture: for many people, the bracket looks more like a reason to take part than a test of expertise. The AP-NORC poll also found that informal betting with friends or coworkers was the most common way people bet on sports, reported by 26%, ahead of in-person betting at casinos (23%) and online or app betting (14%).

That finding matters for gambling culture, because it shows how much sports betting happens inside ordinary friend and work groups, where the setting is social and the stakes are often set by the group itself.

The Other Side: Is It Gambling, and Who Is Affected?

Opinions divide on whether a paid bracket counts as gambling. In the AP-NORC poll, 56% of adults said entering a March Madness bracket pool for money is gambling, 21% said it is not, and 22% said it depends on the amount of money involved. The public is divided on where the line sits, and legal confusion adds to the uncertainty: in the 2018 survey, 62% of adults said they were not sure whether paid betting pools are legal.

Public-health groups treat the tournament as a moment for awareness. The National Council on Problem Gambling says Problem Gambling Awareness Month, established in 2003, takes place in March in part to align with the national attention gambling gets during March Madness. The calendar itself reflects how closely the tournament and gambling are linked, even when the stakes are small.

If gambling feels hard to control, the National Problem Gambling Helpline, 1-800-MY-RESET, offers call, text and chat services 24/7/365. It is not a crisis line, and anyone in an emergency should call 911 or 988.

Common Misreadings About Bracket Pools

The first misreading is that a bracket pool is not gambling because it is friendly. Surveys show people disagree: many adults do call a paid pool gambling, while others say it depends on the amount. The second is that everybody joins. The AP-NORC poll found 28% fill out a bracket at least some years and 63% of adults have never bet on professional or college sports.

The third is that small stakes mean no one is affected. The YouGov figures show most players expected to put in under $50, but they describe the typical entrant, not everyone. An average hides individual differences, and the surveys cited here cannot say who struggles with gambling and who does not. Rules and legality also differ by state and workplace, so what is accepted in one office may not be in another.

Where to Read Next

Bracket pools connect to other pieces of everyday gambling culture. For the rituals people build around luck, read why gamblers trust lucky rituals. For why people gamble at all, see why people gamble and what research says about motives. For how watching a game changes once there is money on it, read what live betting is like for bettors, and for why a near win lingers in memory, see why bettors remember the parlay that almost hit. Together they show how gambling often arrives through friends and fandom, not through a casino.

Sources & References

• AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (2025) — Bragging rights and the chance to win money motivate March Madness brackets
• YouGov (2019) — Who’s following March Madness?
• The Mellman Group for the American Gaming Association (2018) — Participation in NCAA Pools
• National Council on Problem Gambling (2026) — Preparing for Problem Gambling Awareness Month 2026
• National Council on Problem Gambling — About the National Problem Gambling Helpline