Yes, it’s a longshot, but here’s just how much of a longshot it is.
HOUSTON — As brackets start filling up across the country, one question on a lot of people’s minds — what are the real odds of picking a perfect bracket?
Millions of people will fill out brackets this week, but the chances of getting every game right are astronomically small.
Researchers estimate around 100 million brackets are filled out every year, with more than 50 million Americans joining office pools and online contests. And the money? Experts say about $4 billion will be legally wagered on March Madness this year, with billions more changing hands in office pools and those informal bets.
But all that basketball can come with a cost. Between watching games, checking scores, and ripping up those busted brackets, analysts estimate March Madness distractions cost U.S. businesses more than $15 billion in lost productivity each year.
And while everyone hopes they’ve built the perfect bracket, the math says otherwise. A perfect bracket means predicting 63 games correctly. The odds are a mere 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Yes, quintillion with a Q.
Now that number comes from simple math. In each game, there are two possible outcomes, and when you multiply those across all 63 games, you get 2 to the 63rd power. In other words — almost impossible.
Researchers estimate there are about 7.5 quintillion grains of sand on Earth. Picking the exact same grain as someone else is more likely than picking a perfect bracket.
But here’s the good news for hoops fans. If you actually know just a little bit about basketball, your odds get better. In that case, they improved to about 1 in 120 billion. But, you just never know.