March Madness Is a Blood Bath for Fantasy Sports Rookies

For sophisticated fantasy sports players, March Madness is a feeding frenzy. 

- Joshua Brustein

Every year around this time, tens of millions of Americans who otherwise pay little or no attention to sports—let alone college basketball—participate in the workplace ritual of filling out a March Madness bracket and entering a pool. It’s usually a low-stress, low-stakes affair: Guess how far each school will go in the 68-team, single-elimination NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, put $10 into the pot, and watch Larry in accounts payable clean up. There’s no reliable estimate of how much money is wagered this way annually, but best guesses put it in the billions of dollars.

In the past half-decade, FanDuel and DraftKings, the two besieged leaders in daily fantasy sports, have tried to piggyback onto the tourney’s popularity. FanDuel in 2015 put forth a “Survive the Madness” challenge, paying $40,000 to the winner. DraftKings promoted a “March Mania” game with a $20,000 grand prize. This year the FanDuel champion will earn $50,000. (DraftKings didn’t respond to requests for comment on its plans.)

In theory, these contests scratch the same itch as an office pool. The casual fan can plunk down a little dough, hazard guesses about who will play well, and maybe get lucky; win or lose, they’ve found a reason to care about matchups between colleges they may not be able to locate on a map. In fact, the typical March Madness office pool resembles a daily fantasy contest the same way a pickup basketball game resembles a Final Four duel between the Duke Blue Devils and the Kentucky Wildcats. Larry at work won because he thought Maryland’s terrapin mascot was cuter than Wisconsin’s badger. But in daily fantasy, players such as sox22 don’t let that happen.