The American Gaming Association (AGA) is projecting that Americans will legally bet $2.72 billion on the upcoming men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments.
If the estimates are correct, it represents roughly twice the amount legally wagered on this year’s Super Bowl, according to the AGA’s head of research, Dave Forman.
To calculate its estimate this year, the AGA uses its proprietary commercial gaming revenue database. Its analysis primarily relies on historical state regulatory data relating to college basketball handle and the growth of the overall sports betting market.
This is the first time the AGA is estimating the amount wagered legally during March Madness. Until recently, the majority of March Madness action either took place casually among friends and co-workers or was placed illegally with offshore providers.
For instance, after conducting an online survey, the AGA estimated 68 million Americans would wager $15.5 billion on the 2023 men’s NCAA basketball tournament. Of those, only 31 million adults were expecting to place a traditional sports wager on March Madness through a retail sportsbook, online betting site, or with a bookie. In 2022, the AGA’s estimate was $3.1 billion in total wagers.
"March Madness is the biggest and most mainstream betting event of the year, especially with the brackets," Forman said to ESPN. "But with legal sports betting having been around now for five years and available in almost 40 states, we wanted to turn our focus to the legal market."
Growth of legal wagering
This year, however, there are even more legal opportunities for Americans to place sports bets during 2024’s March Madness. Five more states legalized sports betting since last year’s tournaments.
Currently 38 states and the District of Columbia now offer some form of legalized sports betting. And several states, like North Carolina, enhanced their legal options in the last year by enabling online sports betting.
Traditionally, basketball is serious business in the Tar Heel State. With Duke and North Carolina ranked in the men’s NCAA Top 25 and the NC State women ranked 11th going into the women’s tournament, this year should be no different.
