The challenge is easier this year, as employees only need to pick 30 correct games, compared to the 32 required in 2024.
WASHINGTON — March Madness is a time when basketball fans across the country fill out brackets, hoping to predict winning teams of the college tournament and win prizes. For Berkshire Hathaway employees, the stakes are higher than most.
Warren Buffett, the 94-year-old CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, is offering employees the chance to win $1 million if they correctly predict 30 out of the 32 first-round game winners in this year’s NCAA tournament.
The challenge has become a company tradition, and this year it’s a little easier to win. In the past, employees needed to correctly predict all 32 first-round games. This year, employees must get 30 right.
A perfect bracket through the first 48 games can still unlock a lifetime payout of $1 million annually. This prize was last offered in 2016, but no employee won it.
If no one correctly predicts 30 first-round games, the top employee can still win $250,000.
“I’m getting older,” the 94-year old told The Wall Street Journal about this year’s challenge. “I want to give away a million dollars to somebody while I’m still around as chairman,” he added.
According to NCAA.com, the odds of picking a perfect bracket at random — not even counting the play-in games — is 1 chance out of 2 to the 63rd power, which is 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808, or about 1 in 9.2 quintillion (give or take 20 quadrillion or so). According to University of Hawaii researchers, that is more brackets than the number of grains of sand on Earth.
However, NCAA.com also notes that the odds are more like 1 in 120.2 billion, if the person making the bracket takes into account info about which teams are better and tournament history.
During the 2019 tournament, an Ohio man correctly guessed all the games going into the Sweet 16, according to NCAA.com. But his streak of 49 correct picks was ended when Purdue beat Tennessee 99-94 in overtime of the second game in the Sweet 16.
