Background Research
NCAA March Madness brackets have been
making March one of the most exciting
months of the year for quite some time
now. David Purdum a writer from ESPN
estimated that nearly 40 Million people
will fill out brackets this year and
these people will make over 70 million
brackets. James Quintong said that
10:30am ET on 3/18/2015 6.7 million
brackets entered the ESPN bracket
challenge for 2015. Although people can
enter multiple brackets on this site
this is a good estimation to start off
with for a reliable source in ESPN. On
average 60 million Americans fill out an
NCAA bracket each year, with the odds of
making a perfect bracket at 1 and 9.2
quintillion. The first bracket pool was
in 1977 at Staten Island Bar with 88
people each at a buy in of $10 and in
2006 at the same bar 150,000 people
entered with the prize money at $1.5
million. In the 1950’s the bracket was
23 teams with nine teams getting a first
round bye. Then in 1975 it expanded to
32 which was where Magic Johnson at
Michigan State meat Larry bird at
Indiana State in the final four which
shot the NCAA tournament into the
national spotlight. In 1985 the
tournament hit its size you are familiar
to at 64 teams. With all that history on
the creation of the “madness” you would
expect everyone in America to
participate, but not all do. As stated
by Will Oremus, Slate's senior
technology writer, said “An estimated
45 percent of Americans
fill out the brackets with their
predictions of the results each year,
and Barack Obama has referred to the
practice as “a
national pastime.”
David Purdum also added, Americans will
wager approximately $9 billion on the
NCAA tournament,
according to new research released the
Thursday before the tournament’s start.
There is an estimated 50 million
Americans participating in March Madness
office pools, companies are willing to
lose at least $1.2 billion for every
single work hour during the first week
of the tournament, according to
calculations by global outplacement firm
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. In a
conducted 2009 Microsoft survey, it was
estimated that 50 million Americans will
participate in March Madness office
pools. If each of those 50 million
workers spend just one hour of work time
filling in their brackets, the cost to
employers paid to unproductive workers
would be $1.2 billion, based on average
hourly earnings of $24.31 reported in
the most recent employment report from
the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A
study that was taken in 2012, 86 percent
of people who responded to an MSN survey
admitted that they will devote at least
part of their workday to updating
brackets, checking scores and following
games during the tournament. If that
survey pool was representative of the
U.S. working population, more than 100
million workers are expected to be
distracted by March Madness.
<https://www.challengergray.com/press/press-releases/march-madness-could-cost-employers-12b>
<https://www.challengergray.com/press/press-releases/march-madness-could-cost-employers-12b>
<https://www.challengergray.com/press/press-releases/march-madness-could-cost-employers-12b>
