How To Bet On March Madness

The major conference tournaments concluded and the NCAA committee on Selection Sunday  has determined the brackets and teams playing in the 2025 men’s NCAA Tournament. It’s time to bet on March Madness as fans feel the excitement ahead and fill out their brackets, review the matchups and odds and prepare for the most watched and wagered sporting event delivered by college basketball.

Is March Madness Betting Legal

For fans and residents in nearly nearly 40 states, online sports betting is legal and sports bettors have plenty of betting sites to choose from. The minimum age to gamble on sports is 21, with some jurisdictions allowing 18+.

What Is A List Of Reputable Sites For March Madness Betting

Many regulated sports betting sites operate in numerous markets, helping fuel a record $119 billion handle in 2023 that grew to $147 billion in 2024. A 25% increase in revenue to states reached $13.7 billion with more than 95% of that activity happening online.

The menu of options offered by top online sportsbooks like FanDuel, Draftkings, BetMGM, Caesars, Bet365 or Fanatics will make betting on the tournament as easy as hitting a layup. For fans in other states including the three most populous states of California, Texas and Florida, there are options like BetOnline to place your bets. Efforts by Georgia lawmakers to legalize betting in that state fizzled again recently.

This year’s March Madness South Regional is in Atlanta, along with next month’s Masters in Georgia drawing top golfers playing this week in Florida at The Players Championship. Also, the 2025 NCAA Tournament West Regional is in San Francisco, CA March 27-29 with the East Regional in Neward, NJ and Midwest Regional in Indianapolis, IN.

How Does Betting Work On FanDuel

FanDuel provides a vast menu of sports betting odds and options on their site. A helpful sports betting guide provides tools and resources so you can better understand how to read the odds, use the FanDuel app and different types of bets like spread, moneyline and totals. Prop bets on FanDuel Sportsbook with insight from FanDuel Research are most popular and offer more ways to win including Same Game Parlays.

What Are Betting Tips?

The intensity of a one-and-done format of the NCAA Tournament makes betting on the games as exciting as the filling out brackets. But betting on March Madness is different and the odds, spread and totals can move quickly as bookmakers released betting lines for the next group of games as teams win and advance through the brackets.

Most fans are less familiar with the smaller conference teams, and prefer to bet on the bigger favorites and higher-profile top teams from major conferences. That’s not necessarily the most profitable approach on a game-by-game basis. But if you’re focusing on the teams most likely to reach the Elite Eight, Final Four and win the National Championship in San Antonio, TX, then take this advice and note that 21 of the last 22 National Champions have finished in the top 20 in KenPom’s advanced stats of offensive and defensive adjusted efficiency rankings.

Those top teams are currently Duke (No. 2 offense, No. 4 defense), Auburn (1, 3), Houston (9, 2) and Florida (4,11).

Teams that are close to fitting those advanced stats profiles and could change or improve during the final conference tournament games include Tennessee (24, 1), Alabama (3, 32), Texas Tech (7, 27), Michigan State (28, 5), Iowa State (25, 6) and Gonzaga (10, 28).

How To Build Your Bracket And Top Teams Odds

FanDuel just past along the most bet teams to win the NCAA Championship ahead of the brackets being released March 16. Those top teams and national title odd include:

• +550: Duke
• +650: Florida
• +1600: Michigan State
• +10000, or 100/1: Connecticut
• +310: Auburn

The teams with the most money (handle) bet to cut down the nets and win the national championship are Duke, Florida, Auburn, Connecticut and Alabama (+1100), with Houston (+700) and Tennessee (+1600) also drawing more betting interest.

Almost no other sports playoff produces a level of interest so far above the draw of its regular season. College basketball and betting on March Madness draws intense interest as a most exciting watch and wager event with three weeks of sports betting options opions on the road to the Final Four in San Antonio. The fun of building a NCAA Tournament bracket and crafting your bets, picks and props throughout the tournament help this popularity endure.

You can bet on it.

Originally posted in Forbes March 13.