March Madness Betting 2025

It is that special time of the year again! We have made our selections and the teams are all seeded. Now it's time to get the tournament started. Unless you work in an office or live under a rock, you've heard of March Madness.

March Madness is how the NCAA crowns its men's college basketball champion each year. It's a 68-team, single-elimination tournament played in 14 different locations across the country, culminating in the championship game in San Antonio, Texas. Each year, this national showcase of youthful inexperience offers the thrilling upsets and inspiring Cinderella stories that seem to be the natural province of the very best in college basketball.

With such a highly anticipated and widely watched sporting event, you might expect to see some sports betting. In fact, betting on the NCAA Tournament is easily the second biggest event of the year, behind only the Super Bowl, when it comes to action across all legal and illegal sportsbooks. And why not? There are 67 games over the course of the three weeks of the tournament, which Breakdown brings to you in a completely free format. Filling out the brackets is basically an office bonding exercise at this point. It is the one time of the year when everyone feels perfectly comfortable hanging around the office water cooler.

What We Look for in a March Madness Betting Site

When you think about placing a bet on your favorite sport online, you are faced with an almost endless number of options. The problem is that not all of them are safe, and certainly not all of them are what they claim to be. We work hard to uncover the truth about the many different types of online sports betting sites. If you're interested, we have a great article that explains our methods for determining the legitimacy and safety of these sites.

Additionally, here are some of the criteria that go into our rankings of the best March Madness betting sites.

Bracketology Basics

Every year at the end of February, we hear the sports pundits on TV talking about this thing they call "bracketology. When they use that word, they're talking about figuring out which teams will get the golden ticket to the March Madness tournament - and more importantly, what seeds they'll get. Our so-called experts then pretend to know what's going on and give us the 411 on which teams are in and which teams will be sent to the NIT.

The process of determining which schools will triumph in the tournament can also be referred to as "bracketology. Of course, it is not an easy task. As those in the media who make their living predicting the outcome of basketball games know all too well, teams and our understanding of them are constantly in flux. Even the best prognosticators can only hope to get about half of their predictions right.

Regions

Every year, the tournament bracket is divided into the following four sectors.

• East
• West
• Midwest
• South

These are usually the areas that are used most years, although they may shift a bit depending on which regions are hosting.

Selections Process

At the end of every season, we have this event called March Madness. It features sixty-eight of the best teams. The first thirty-two teams are easy to pick because they win their respective conference championships and just get a free ticket to the party. The remaining thirty-six teams? Those are the ones that really make people talk (and some even make people protest).

A committee selects the additional teams that will participate in the tournament. This committee consists of ten members who are a mix of athletic directors and conference commissioners from all areas of Division I athletics. They are selected from across the country with the specific intent of bringing different perspectives to the process and ensuring that all conferences have a seat at the table. When a school or conference represented by a committee member is under discussion, that member must leave the room.

"At-large bids go to programs that do not win their conference tournaments but are still selected for the NCAA Tournament. Traditionally, these teams come from the top conferences-such as the Big Ten, ACC and SEC-but any conference can produce an at-large team that's worthy of selection. The committee selects at-large teams by considering many different variables. Here are a few that we know they consider.

• RPI Rankings - The Rating Percentage Index is a metric used to rank teams and is calculated by a combination of a team's record, strength of schedule, and the quality of its wins and losses
• ESPN's BPI - The Basketball Power Index is a number between 0-100 meant to represent how far above or below average a team has performed. It's used to predict future performance and is calculated by taking into account factors such as opponent strength, pace of play, venue, travel distance, days of rest and altitude, with the intent of quantifying how difficult the team's record was to achieve
• Injured Players - The committee will consider whether a program was without an impact player during the season, which may have affected its record, or if it will be without an athlete in the tournament who was instrumental in the team's regular season finish.A program's record against the other schools already in the tournament
• a team's performance on neutral courts
• the strength of its schedule when it comes to playing other teams during the regular season - teams that are not in your conference
• the overall strength of the conference
• the "vision test;

“First Four” Play-in Games

The actual tournament consists of sixty-four teams competing in a single-elimination format. But before that can happen, there are the First Four, which determine the final four teams that will fill out the bracket. The first two days of March Madness feature two play-in games per day.

To reduce the number of teams that feel snubbed, the NCAA doubled the number of opening round games to eight. This opening round features the four lowest seeded teams that got in via automatic bid (these teams won their conferences, but their conferences aren't very good) and compete for the sixteen seed. These teams really aren't very good, but now there are two games to decide who gets the sixteen seed.

Rounds

Now that all the colleges have been selected and the play-in games have been completed, it is time for March Madness to begin! Seeding determines how teams are paired. The #1 seed plays the #16, the #2 seed plays the #15, the #3 seed plays the #14, and so on. Teams are eliminated based on a single loss. The rounds continue in this manner:

• Round of 64 - The first round of the tournament
• 32nd Round - The next-to-last round of the tournament
• Sweet 16 - Semifinals for each region
• Elite Eight - Sectional Championships
• National Semifinals featuring the champions of four regions
• Championship Match;

Filling Out a Bracket

Once all the teams have been selected and seeded, the real excitement of March Madness can begin. People all over the country-endlessly participating in the American pastime of filling out brackets-are either betting on the outcome of the tournament or predicting in some way which teams will make it to the Final Four and which team will win it all. We here at the Buzzer have some very educated (ahem) guesses about what will happen over the next three weeks. Tune in - either now or later - to see which teams we pick to advance and which team we predict will be cutting down the nets in Houston on April 1.

For additional information and strategies for filling out your March Madness bracket, check out the following article:

Ways to Bet on the Tournament

The NCAA Division I Tournament is the second most heavily wagered sporting event of the year. With 67 games to wager on, that's a lot of opportunities to bet on college basketball. And we're not just talking about filling out a bracket and entering a pool. Each of the 67 games offers multiple ways to bet.

Here are some of the various options for those wishing to wager throughout the tournament.

Live Betting

Most sports betting takes place before a contest actually starts. But betting can also take place in real time as the action unfolds. With Live Betting, you can be part of the action not only before a contest, but while it is happening. And you can do so while making decisions based on what you see on the field, court or ice.

Some online sportsbooks offer live betting during March Madness. You can pick a single game and then place a variety of bets while watching the action unfold in real time. You can bet on the halftime score, who will score first after halftime and who will commit the next foul, not to mention a variety of bets on those performances.

If you want an interactive sports betting experience that adds to the excitement of every game, try live betting. The odds are constantly adjusting in response to the action on the field, which means your opportunities to spot weak lines and time your bets are virtually endless. For more information - and some strategies to consider - check out our special article on live betting, linked below.

Moneyline

A Money Line bet is a bet on which team will win the game. Both teams are given "odds" in the form of a three-digit number that can be either positive or negative. These numbers represent how much each team is favored or disfavored, and they determine how much a payout will be if you win.

To illustrate, consider the case of number one seeded Villanova playing sixteenth seeded Radford. As such, Villanova will be a heavy betting favorite. When you look at the game on the board, the odds will look like this:

• Villanova: -450;
• Radford: +425;

This means that for every $450 you bet on Villanova, you will win $100. If you bet $100 on Radford to win, you will win $425 if they pull off the big upset they need to win this game. Learn more about betting the money line here.

Totals

Sometimes it is more difficult to determine which college will win than it is to predict the outcome of a game. You may not have a clue which program will come out on top, but you know you are in for a barnburner between two high-scoring teams. For those situations, there is over/under betting.

Bets on the total number of points scored by both teams in a game are called totals or over-unders. The most common bet is on the number of points scored, but you can also bet on anything from the total number of fouls called to the number of three-pointers made.

The lines are set by the bookmakers according to their predictions of how the game will end and what number will attract an equal number of bets on each side. Bettors then bet on whether they think the combined final score will be higher or lower than the line.

So, if Wichita State is playing West Virginia in the second round, and the sports book is expecting a high-scoring game a la West Virginia, they might set the over-under at 158.5. You then decide whether you want to bet on the total to go "Over" (which at 158.5 means you think there will be at least 159 points scored) or "Under" (you think there will be at most 158 points scored). The half point is used to ensure that there are no ties.

For a more detailed analysis of total bets and some strategies for placing these bets, read the following article on the subject.

Futures

March Madness is a great opportunity to place bets on futures. As the name implies, these are not bets on one game or another, but on an outcome that will be decided sometime in the future. And when it comes to betting on the outcome of a sporting event that involves a whole field of teams, rather than just one or two that will face off in a game, the choices are almost always offered in fractional odds.

Futures betting covers a wide variety of topics, such as Final Four participants or Most Outstanding Player. If you want to learn more about futures betting, and more importantly, how to become a profitable futures bettor, then check out this article.

Prop Bets

Betting on propositions is what can make sports betting truly enjoyable. These are odds offered on a myriad of possibilities and outcomes. They don't have to be limited to which team will win or how many points will be scored; they can be on virtually anything, which can lead to some pretty wild and crazy betting opportunities.

During March Madness, you might find prop bets available on which team will win the tip-off at the very beginning of a game - before the insane amount of scoring and missed shots that usually follow. You might also find prop bets on which player from whichever team wins the championship will have the honor of cutting down the net after that team wins the final game, earning his place in NF5A history.

For a more in-depth understanding of Proposition Betting, click on the link below to visit our page dedicated to Proposition Betting:

Parlays

Because so many games are played each day during the Madhouse of March, especially in the early rounds, the tournament is perfect for parlay betting. This is where you take two or three or more individual bets and combine them into one. You would do this if you are not particularly confident about betting straight up in any one game and are looking for a way to potentially maximize your payout without losing a significant amount of your bankroll.

Sometimes, bettors want to make multiple selections on the same event, so they mix a Money Line bet on the winner with a Total bet on the number of points that will be scored. For example, say you like Villanova to win and think they will also be part of a mucho grande game. You would put down a $100 bill on "Villanova and the Over". And if both of those things happen (if that parlay actually wins), you'd walk away with a significantly fatter wallet than if you'd made those two bets separately.

Parlay cards can be as large as you like, although the more you bet, the less likely you are to win. When you get to the 8- to 10-pick parlays, the odds of winning are almost zero, but if you get extremely lucky, the payouts can be immense. It's a lot like playing the lottery.

If you want to learn more about parlay bets and read some good strategies on how to construct winning parlay cards, check out the following article.

Point Spreads

Teams can sometimes be so unevenly matched, especially in a tournament like March Madness, that money line bets become unfavorable. When a team's chances of winning are almost a sure thing, the amount of money you have to risk to back that team is often not worth the return. This is why point spreads were invented.

In order to create a level playing field for betting, point spreads are used to give each team an equal chance of winning. This works by subtracting points from one team and adding them to the other to make the competition more comparable.

When betting on Villanova -20, you require them to triumph by more than twenty points in order for your bet to "cover the spread" and be a winning one. After the final score is determined, you take the 'Nova point total and subtract twenty. If the total is still higher than Radford's, you win this time with the mutt spread. If you choose to back the underdog in this bet, with Radford +20, what are your requirements for them to meet or exceed for you to, uh, salute this bet?

To gain a better understanding of point spreads, the reasons for betting on them, and some successful strategies to use when placing such bets, take a look at the article we have provided below that focuses on these types of bets.

Helpful Basic Betting Tips

Now that we have explained what March Madness is, how it works, and how to bet on it, we can move on to the much more interesting area of actually placing the bets. But before you start putting your money down on the outcome of a game, take a moment to read these ten tips for betting on sports. They won't guarantee you a win, but they should help increase your odds.

Bankroll Management

Properly managing your bankroll is essential to ensuring that you can gamble in a responsible and healthy manner. The first part of bankroll management is setting a clear limit on how much money you can afford to lose without it affecting your quality of life. This should be a number that you can confidently say is expendable and will not have a long-term negative impact on you emotionally, mentally, or financially.

Once you have determined your bankroll, the next step is to decide how often you will wager. For example, assuming you have $6,700 to play with during March Madness, if you wanted to bet on every game from the First Four through the championship, you would need to bet about $100 per game. There are more sophisticated ways to divide your bankroll that take into account varying degrees of confidence in different picks, but we wanted to keep things simple.

For a more detailed explanation of betting plans and bankroll management, follow the links below to read more about both topics. - Bankroll Management: How to Handle Your Money - Betting Plans: How to Distribute Your Bets Properly

Don’t Pick Too Many Upsets

One of the many wonderful aspects of March Madness is the Cinderella stories and breathtaking upsets. Every year we get some unexpected low seed that comes out and stuns the world by upsetting a seemingly much better, higher seeded, much more prestigious program. The fun part of filling out a bracket is trying to predict when these amazing upsets are going to happen.

However, do not fall into the trap of picking too many underdog wins. Most of the time, the top seeds go very deep in the tournament, and the so-called lesser schools do not last long. Sure, upsets happen, but when filling out your bracket, keep the number of upsets to a minimum (2-4 at most) and make them reasonable. Sixteenth seeds never beat first seeds (i.e., never), but fourth seeds lose to twelfth seeds with some regularity.

Coaching Is King in College Basketball

For those who have been following March Madness for a few years, a familiar sight greets you each year. Many of the same teams that battled their way through the NCAA Tournament the previous year find themselves doing so again a year later. It's not just that the top basketball programs recruit the best talent; it's also that those same programs have the best coaches. Here's a look at the 10 best NCAA Tournament coaches of all time.

Numerous legendary NCAA basketball coaches have shown that they can almost always get the most out of their teams. Even when the talent they coach doesn't match up with the talent on another team, these coaches tend to win a significant number of games, especially in the NCAA Tournament. Coaches like Tom Izzo of Michigan State and Mike Krzyzewski of Duke always seem to have their teams in position to win, and their teams often make deep runs in the tournament.

Who Has the One-and-Done Players?

Currently, the rules seem to be on the verge of changing, but as of now, athletes must spend one year in college after high school before they can join the NBA. Thus, the best players in the country are usually freshmen who would be playing professional ball if not for the rules. These players are called "one-and-dones" because it's assumed they will only stay in college for one season.

Since the rule's inception, these players have influenced the outcome of many March Madness tournaments. Before you pick your bracket, take a look at which players are projected to be first-round picks next year. They may lack experience, but they make up for it with athleticism and talent.

Shop for the Best Lines

Winning consistently at sports betting over a long period of time requires much more than just a good hunch or a series of lucky breaks. It requires a disciplined and analytical approach that goes far beyond the purely intuitive methods many people use. You need to have the concept of value in mind for every bet you make-not just some of them, and not just the bets you think will win. What it really comes down to is a mental process of predicting the outcome of a game and then comparing that prediction to the odds offered by the bookmaker.

Before placing your bet, check the different odds offered by different online sportsbooks. If some of them offer better odds or a point spread that's slightly more favorable, then you should only place your bet under those circumstances. It's often the case that half a point or some other minuscule factor can make or break a bet.

Also, even a small change in the money line odds counts. It may not seem like it has a big impact on an individual bet, but cumulatively, over the long haul, it adds up to a higher return. Depending on what the bet's odds translate into in terms of implied probability, a flip in the direction of the line can take a bet from "not really a good idea" to "definitely worth your time and money.

Bet Teams You’re Familiar With

With a tournament like March Madness, it can be easy to get caught up in the excitement and start betting on every single game. But before you place any bets, take a moment to think about how much time you actually spend watching most of the teams in the tournament. Surely you do not have enough free hours in your day to follow all sixty-eight teams and their unappealing weaknesses and wildly fluctuating strengths. You might be able to follow one or two, but that kind of investment leaves you no chance of following the real contenders.

You may know more about the proclivities and trends of your local university than most people in the betting public and even the oddsmakers. These are the games where you have a real chance of making money. It's (probably) not going to happen if you make a bunch of bold predictions during March Madness. If you're hoping to profit from gambling during this time, focus your attention (and your bets) on the teams you know best. Make the safe call on the local teams and you might just see some greenbacks come your way.

Never Chase Your Losses

Some years, your bracket does much better than others. If you've had a bad couple of rounds and lost several games in a row, it's normal to want to work hard and turn things around. You know how often you're right with your picks, so after an uncharacteristic losing streak, you'll probably feel much more inclined to pick the teams you think are the best to win those games. And you're right, sometimes feeling inclined and going with your instincts can work out much better than overthinking.

With this in mind, individuals will begin to place larger and larger bets in a desperate attempt to cover their deficits and right the ship. Don't give in to this temptation! This is known as "chasing your losses" and it is the method by which many players get themselves into deep and serious trouble. We hope to avoid this through bankroll management and disciplined betting plans.

Attempting to recover from losses will fail far more often than it will succeed in reversing your fortunes. It's best to understand that cold streaks and hot streaks happen mathematically. If you stick to your plans and continue to buy for value and play the games to the best of your ability, the math will work itself out and your luck will eventually change for the better. Trying to recover from losses can be devastating.

More March Madness Articles

With a solid understanding of March Madness and how to find the best online betting sites, you'll be in a fantastic position to improve your sports betting. If you want to take it even further and really go for it in the next March Madness, the following articles can help. They will either tell you more about the competition or provide you with some sort of event-related suggestion. They present the information in a no-nonsense manner.

• History of March Madness
• The best March Madness teams of all time
• Betting tips to win at March Madness
• How to spot a March Madness upset
• How to host your office's March Madness pool
• The best March Madness games in NCAA history;

The Wrap Up

One of those sporting events that transcends fandom is March Madness. A huge swath of the population fills out brackets and bets on the tournament almost as if it were the Super Bowl, with the kind of nonsensical/creative/so-crazy-it-might-work odds that sportsbooks only come up with for a select few events each year. But why, when our attention is divided not only by the other sports going on at the same time, but also by the months-long festival of basketball that is the NBA playoff season, do we shower so much love on this event that some of its (ok, most of its) team mascots aren't even recognizable to the average American?

When it comes to betting on tournament games, the first order of business is finding a sportsbook that will work for you. Online gambling can be a precarious venture if you're not sure which operations are trustworthy and which sites are outright scams. This is why our experts spend so many hours researching online betting sites. Not only do they look for the best places to bet, but they also make sure that the sites themselves are safe.

Instead of you having to take risks and wait for a favorable outcome, we've done the hard work for you and found the most reliable and trustworthy online bookmakers on the Internet and ranked them in our list of recommendations. To save you time and get to the fun stuff, we present you with a list of online sportsbooks that will give you the best odds and provide you with the entertainment you're looking for.