Nearly 68 million Americans expected to wager on March Madness
CBSN
A growing number of sports fans plan to try their lucky by betting on the NCAA's annual March Madness college basketball tournament, which kicked off this week.
About 68 million Americans will place a wager on the games, up from 45 million in 2022, the American Gaming Association predicted. Of that number, 31 million plan to bet online, at a sportsbook or with a bookie, while 1.5 million plan to bet casually with friends, it found. Some 56 Americans plan to fill out a bracket. Alabama, Gonzaga, Kentucky, Texas A&M and UCLA are this year's favorites to win. But the AGA expects total bets on the tournament to fall to $15.5 billion, down from $16 billion a year ago.
The gaming association drew its estimates from an online survey of 2,200 adults conducted earlier this month. By comparison, an estimated 50 million placed some kind of bet on Super Bowl LVII in February, according to the association.
