Warren Buffett has held a March crazy bracket competition for Berkshire Hathaway employees and its subsidiaries for nearly a decade, offering $1 million (roughly) to anyone who successfully predicts the first 48 games of the NCAA Championship. The game has not won the big winner yet. At the age of 94, Buffett became increasingly impatient. “I’m getting older,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “I want to give someone a million dollars when I’m still chairman.”
That's why this year, the head of Berkshire Hathaway is following the rules. A $1 million expenditure will be put into practice to predict results for at least 30 of the 32 first rounds, scheduled for March 20 and March 21. If no one gets a 9-digit number award, Buffett will earn the most wine awards for his typical fixed can with a typical merge can that grew from $100,000 to $250,000.
If they choose the right team until the game's “Sweet 16” round, 400,000 employees like Geico and See Candies, such as Geico and See Candies, will also have a chance to win Buffett's original grand prize. No one has won the price since the competition began in 2016. As always, the reward would double if Buffett’s hometown team came from Creton or Omaha, Nebraska.
Buffett, a longtime basketball fan, first involved his staff in the crazy March bets of 2014, when Berkshire Hathaway worked with mortgage lender Quicken Loans and promised $1 billion to anyone who submitted perfect brackets. It is no surprise that the terms are then relaxed enough, as the task is nearly impossible. According to NCAA data, the chance of choosing perfect brackets is 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (9.2 Quintillion).
But Elon Musk has previously suggested that AI tools like Xai’s Grok chatbot might one day do the task. “Buffett didn't expect that,” the entrepreneur said last month, when unveiling the research capabilities of Grok-3, the latest model of XAI.
Musk also participated in the crazy fun of March this year. His social media platform X is partnering with Ubereats to launch its own race that offers travel to Mars through SpaceX's Starship vehicle for anyone submitting perfect brackets. Other prize options include $250,000, a year of free residential Starlink service or VIP watching the launch of the Starship, and if the perfect bracket is not selected, the runner-up will take home $100,000.
What are the odds of winning Berkshire Hathaway’s March Crazy Contest?
The first 48 games of the game are also far from possible, and only one non-Berkeshire Hathaway worker can achieve once in the history of parentheses tracked by the NCAA. But Buffett's employees may get better shots this year through investors' new amendments. For example, in 2017, at least five participants were able to correctly guess the results of the first 31 games.
Buffett told the Wall Street Journal that he might ask his executive assistant to fill in his brackets, hoping to finally pile up odds in favor of his employees. “We're easier this year than ever,” he said. “Just think about the excitement that if someone gets a million, it will generate throughout the place.”
