Nearly 50 Million People Expected To Bet March Madness 2021

• 47 million Americans are expected to bet on March Madness in 2021 including 17.8 million online bettors.
• 36.7 million Americans expected to fill out a March Madness bracket.

LAS VEGAS – As March Madness begins on Thursday, the projections for how many people are going to partake in any March Madness betting are in.

There are plenty of different ways to bet on March Madness whether it is filling out a bracket, betting on game props on single games, placing a classic wager on the straight-up winner or even filling out a bracket and entering it into a contest with friends.

Looking at the projections for the amount of action that is going to be placed on March Madness, the American Gaming Association is projecting that 47 million Americans are expected to place any sort of wager on March Madness in 2021.

That 47 million is the same number of people that were projected to place a March Madness bet for the 2020 tournament that was canceled.

As for the traditional March Madness brackets, 36.7 million Americans are projected to fill out a bracket which is down 8% from the 2019 season. This has to do with the legal sports betting industry on the rise as from 2019 the number of people betting on March Madness has gone up from 17.8 million to 36.7 million.

When it comes to placing March Madness bets online or in-person, online betting has a huge edge over bets placed in-person. 17.8 million people are projected to place any type of wager on a legal gambling site for the 2021 tournament.

This is a monstrous 206% increase from the 2019 tournament.

In-person bets are up 79% from 2019 as 8.3 million people are expected to place a bet on March Madness at a retail sportsbook.

Looking at the interest level in March Madness amongst Americans, it has risen from 2019 as there was 23% interest from Americans then compared to the 26% interest now. As for the fans, 42% of fans have stated that they followed college basketball closely this season and of that 42%, 70% of them said it increased their chances of betting on the tournament as well.

As for who they are betting on, that is a different story with bettors taking the odds on nearly every Tournament team. The three that have been seeing the most action to win the National Championship are Gonzaga (17% of bets), Florida State (11%) and Baylor (8%).

All in all, March Madness is shaping up to be one of the most bet on sporting events of the year, per usual.