Warren Buffett is shaking up his March Madness bracket contest with a new twist: predict at least 30 of the first-round games to win $1 million, or offer a consolation prize if no one gets it right.
For nearly a decade, Warren Buffett has held a March Madness bracket contest for employees of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) and its subsidiaries, offering $1 million annually to anyone who successfully predicts the winners of the first 48 games in the NCAA tournament. The contest has yet to yield a big winner. And at 94 years old, Buffett is getting impatient.
Warren Buffett is a renowned American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.
Born on August 30, 1930, in Omaha, Nebraska, he began investing at the age of 11.
Buffett's investment philosophy emphasizes value investing, focusing on long-term growth rather than short-term gains.
He took control of Berkshire Hathaway in 1965 and transformed it into a multinational conglomerate through strategic acquisitions and investments.
Buffett is known for his frugal lifestyle and generosity, donating billions to charity through the Giving Pledge.
His net worth exceeds $100 billion, making him one of the wealthiest individuals in the world.
A New Twist on an Old Contest
This year, the Berkshire Hathaway head is bending the rules. A one-time $1 million payout will be doled out to whomever correctly predicts the outcomes of at least 30 of the 32 first-round games, which are scheduled for March 20 and March 21. If no one takes home the nine-figure prize, Buffett will offer his typical consolation pot—which has increased from $100,000 to $250,000—to the employee that selects the most winners correctly.
March Madness, also known as the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship, has its roots in 1939.
The first tournament featured eight teams and was held at the University of Pittsburgh.
The name 'March Madness' was coined in 1939 by Henry Porter, a sports editor for the Chicago Tribune.
He used the phrase to describe the excitement surrounding the tournament.
Today, March Madness is one of the most popular sporting events in the United States, featuring 68 teams competing over three weeks.
The more than 400,000 employees of Berkshire Hathaway companies like Geico and See’s Candies will also still have the opportunity to win Buffett’s original grand prize of $1 million every year for the rest of their lives if they pick the right teams up until the tournament’s ‘Sweet 16’ round. No one has won the prize since the contest started in 2016.
A History of Unfulfilled Promises
Buffett first got his employees involved in March Madness betting in 2014 when Berkshire Hathaway partnered with the mortgage lender Quicken Loans and promised to give $1 billion to anyone who submitted a perfect bracket. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that these terms were subsequently loosened, as the task is nearly impossible.
The odds of picking a perfect bracket are 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (9.2 quintillion), according to the NCAA. Even Elon Musk has suggested that A.I. tools like xAI‘s Grok chatbot might one day be up to the task. ‘Buffett wasn’t counting on this,’ said the entrepreneur last month while unveiling the research capabilities of Grok-3, the newest model from xAI.
A New Era for Buffett’s Contest
While predicting the first 48 games of the tournament remains far from likely and has only been achieved once by a non-Berkshire Hathaway worker in the history of brackets tracked by the NCAA, Buffett’s staffers will likely have a better shot this year with the investor’s new amendments. In 2017, for example, at least five participants managed to correctly guess the outcomes of the initial 31 games.
Buffett hopes that the odds are finally stacked in his employees’ favors. ‘We made it easier this year than ever,’ he said. ‘Just think of the excitement it would create all over the place if somebody gets a million instead.‘
