Latest March Madness Betting Picks

?
?

Meet Our March Madness Cappers & Experts for the 2024 Tournament

?
?

3 Best March Madness Betting Sites & Apps

March Madness college gambling is one of the most exciting times of the year. It’s the first major sporting event post-NFL Super Bowl, lasting close to an entire month.
This tournament features the top 64 NCAA Division 1 basketball teams as they all strive for a championship. There are four divisions, each having No. 1 to No. 16 seeds from all over the country.
So, picking the right March Madness betting sites is essential as you’ll find the best odds, great betting options, stellar bonuses and promotions. You'll also discover a mobile app that’ll work great and not cause you any headaches.

Below, we’ll look at the top four sites you can use to engage in March Madness college gambling.

Last 10 Years March Madness Winners and MOP

Check out the last 10 years winners in the tournament, followed by the MOP that year. If you want to read up on more about the MOPs you can click on the player name and head over to each player's profile to see deeper stats.

?

DraftKings Sportsbook - Prop Bets and "Bet & Get" offers

At DraftKings Sportsbook, you’ll experience a library of prop bets unlike any you’ll see elsewhere. Where DraftKings is most successful is with prop bets in the single-player markets. There will be a plethora of options and players to choose from, and the odds on props are released here before most other March Madness betting sites.

DraftKings March Madness offers

Whenever events like March Madness happen, DraftKings Sportsbook shows up with a variety of tempting offers and promotions. It’s been known to have March Madness sports gambling offers such as betting $5 and receiving $200 in bonus bets if your team wins. Typically, these bonus bets are broken up into eight parts, so you’d receive eight $25 bonus bets.

Additionally, DraftKings will have odds boosts available, providing more line value on a wager you may have already considered.

User experience with the DraftKings app

When you open the DraftKings Sportsbook mobile app, you’ll see an account icon in the upper left-hand corner. This is a collapsible menu with links to rewards, the help center, and resources to learn about how to bet.

Back on the homepage, there are four menus stacked on one another:

• A menu along the top of the app with links to the sportsbook, quick parlay tool, flash bet options, and more
• Promotions and bonuses currently offered
• Sports you can wager on
• Additional menu with the available sports you can wager on to quickly sort through upcoming matchups

Along the bottom of the app is a static menu, meaning you’ll see it no matter what page you’re on. This has links to the homepage, live betting, your bets, a list of sports, and rewards/promotions.

Screenshots from DraftKings app with NCAAB prop markets

DraftKings does this well:

• Great history with March Madness college gambling bonuses and promotions
• Wide variety of prop bets, including single-player
• Easy-to-use mobile app that has multiple menus that make navigation seamless

DraftKings could improve:

• Also has a history with one of the worst welcome bonuses among March Madness betting sites, so there’s no way to predict what will be offered until March Madness happens

FanDuel Sportsbook - Great March Madness odds

FanDuel Sportsbook succeeds in offering players great line value on moneyline, point spreads, and totals. You’ll also have access to single-player prop bets here. Still, the timeline in which the odds are released and the number of available bets tend to be slower and fewer than some competitors.

On top of this, you can expect to find some kind of bracket challenge that's free to players.

FanDuel's March Madness offers

FanDuel Sportsbook offers new players a welcome bonus known as a “bet & get” promotion. It’s simple—after creating an account, if you wager $5, you’ll get back $150 in bonus bets. You must deposit at least $10, and the bonus bets expire after 14 days.

User experience in the FanDuel app

When you open the FanDuel Sportsbook mobile app, you’ll see a menu across the top with icons for the available sports, live betting, promos, odds boosts, and more.
Just under this is another menu showcasing the available promotions, followed by a menu listing the available sports again, but in order of the most anticipated upcoming games.
Along the bottom of the app are links to the homepage, a list of sports, your bet history, and your account.
Under your account, you’ll find links to deposit, withdraw, the help center, and more, but you must be logged in to see this menu.

Screenshots from FanDuel's app

FanDuel sportsbook app does this well:

• Accessible welcome bonus to all types of players where you receive $150 in bonus bets for wagering $5
• Great mobile app with easy navigation that’s also aesthetically pleasing
• History of exciting March Madness promotions, including bracket contests

FanDuel could improve:

• Prop bet odds are released a bit later than other competitors

BetMGM Sportsbook - Sweet 16 Parlay galore

With March Madness consisting of 64 teams and 63 games, there are plenty of options for creating parlays, and this is where BetMGM succeeds. Here, you’ll find tools like Easy Parlay. This is a directory that you can use to view all college basketball games and quickly pick which moneyline, point spread, and total wagers you want to make. There’s also the One Game Parlay, where you can create a parlay inside of one game, adding things like the point spread and prop bets.

BetMGM's March Madness offers

The current welcome offer at BetMGM Sportsbook is a first bet offer where, if your first wager loses, you’ll receive bonus bets paid back to the same offer, up to $1,000. If the wager was under $50, you get a single bonus bet. If it’s more than $50, you get five bonus bets equal to 20% of the wager.

However, BetMGM has had offers in the past where if you bet $10 or so on a March Madness game, you’ll get $200 in site credit if a three-pointer is made. This is a given, so it’s a quick way to add bonus funds to your virtual wallet.

User experience with the BetMGM app

The BetMGM Sportsbook mobile app opens with a page to log in, register, or check out the platform as a guest. When you get to the homepage, you’ll see a search bar atop the page where you can search for teams or games. To the left is a collapsible menu with a list of the available sports.
Under this, another menu for the available sports and the live betting page.

Continuing down the page, you’ll have a menu for the available promotions, with the most anticipated upcoming games below that. There will also be bet recommendations for these games.
Along the bottom of the app is a static menu, regardless of where you venture on the site. This has links to the sportsbook, promotions, and your account. When you click on “Account,” you’ll have links to BetMGM Rewards, Responsible Gaming, the Help Center, and an option to change your state if you’re somewhere else.

BetMGM sportsbook app March Madness pros:

• Great tools for creating parlays such as Easy Parlay and One Game Parlay
• Fantastic current welcome bonus, but also has a history of offering other exciting promotions
• Solid library of prop bets, including single-player

BetMGM March madness con:

• There is a rewards program, but isn’t something a casual March Madness bettor would be able to use, since you need to wager larger amounts of money to see the benefits.

?

PointsBet? - New ways to bet on March Madness

At PointsBet, you’ll have your typical betting markets like moneyline, point spread, totals, props, futures, etc.

Still, there are two bet types/features where PointsBet shines—PointsBetting and Name A Bet.

1. PointsBetting: Let’s say you want to engage in some March Madness Elite Eight Online Gambling. You want to bet on the total. It’s listed at 105 points. With PointsBetting, you’re paid out based on how correct you are as opposed to a betting line. So, if you wager $10 and the final score is 110 points, you’d win your wager ($10) multiplied by the difference between the listed total and the result (five). Thus, you’d win $50.
2. Name A Bet: With this feature, you can pitch a betting idea to PointsBet. They’ll respond in 24 hours with a yes or no. If they accept, they provide betting odds.

PointsBets March Madness offers

At the time of writing, new players at PointsBet Sportsbook will receive five $100 risk-free bets. However, instead of getting them right away, you’ll get a $100 bet each day over the first five days. For March Madness, this can work very well, as the tournament lasts nearly a month.

On top of this, PointsBet has been known to offer $2,000 in no sweat bets ($1,500 for PointsBetting; $500 for straight bets). This could return when March Madness comes around.

PointsBet user experience in the app

The PointsBet Sportsbook mobile app opens with a menu across the top with the available offers, headlined by the welcome bonus.?Below are three menus you can choose from—Featured, Live, and Next Up. These will show games to wager on that correspond with each category.

Along the bottom of the app is a menu with links to the sports list, live betting, the quick parlay tool, your bet history, and a menu. This menu is collapsible and opens on the left side of the page. You’ll find links to the homepage, live streaming, live betting, promos, the Name A Bet tool, and more.

Screenshots from PointsBet app

Pointsbet does this very well:

• PointsBetting and Name A Bet change the way you can bet on March Madness
• Great five-day welcome bonus with $100 free bets presented over the course of it
• Streamlined mobile app and user interface with a great main menu to completely navigate the site

Pointsbet could improve:

• Player props can be a bit hit or miss here, especially when compared to competitors.

March Madness bonus bets and promos from NCAAB sportsbooks

Any time an event like March Madness happens, online sportsbooks throughout the United States will concoct bonuses and promotions to appeal to those bettors. As mentioned with BetMGM above, it’s not uncommon to find wagers where you bet a small amount and win large bonus cash prizes if a team hits a three-pointer or something that’s almost guaranteed to happen.

Additionally, some online sportsbooks already have welcome bonus first bets, including BetMGM and PointsBet. FanDuel’s current offer of betting $5 to get $150 in bonus bets is another common welcome bonus type that enhances the way you bet on this massive tournament.

Beyond welcome bonuses, you can even find promotions for existing players. These won’t be as grand monetarily, but it could be something as small as “bet $25 on this game and get a $5 bonus bet.” It’s all about finding that value day in, day out throughout this 63-game tournament.

Some of the favorite teams to win in 2023

• Arizona
• Auburn
• Duke
• Gonzaga
• Kentucky
• UCLA
• Villanova
• Houston
• Alabama
• Virginia

March madness bracket contests

On top of the standard March Madness wagers, bonuses, and promotions, some online sportsbooks will offer their players a free-to-play bracket challenge.

For those unaware, before online sports betting was legal in the United States, people would print out tournament brackets and make bets with friends about how many picks they got right. Some sites would offer prizes for perfect brackets. Even Warren Buffett would offer players money for a perfect bracket.

Well, online sportsbooks adapted to that. BetMGM has a $10 million payout for a perfect bracket. DraftKings had a Second Chance Bracket starting in the Sweet 16, where each game you got right had points allocated toward it. This was like a leaderboard: the points would be added up, and the winners would receive prizes.

You can expect to see things like this return each year for the tournament.

BetMGM perfect bracket contest

• Successfully predict a perfect bracket and win $10 million
• $100,000 guaranteed prize for winner with most games correctly picked
• Games during tournament count as 1 point.

DraftKings Irish Spring second change bracket challenge

Sweet 16 - $10,000 second chance bracket challenge

• Picks from Sweet 16
• 10 points per round of 16
• Round of 8 are worth 20 points
• Final four 40 points
• Championship 80 points
• Winner gets $10k

Different kinds of March Madness betting markets and examples

Moneylines

A moneyline wager means betting on the team you think will win the game outright. This removes the point spread (more on that soon), so the odds will reflect the strength and weaknesses of each team. Depending on that gap, the odds here could be quite different from one another, especially if you’re trying to bet on a No. 1 seed against a No. 16 seed. The No. 1 seed could be -1500 and the No. 16 seed +1200. These odds mean that to win $100 on the favorite, you’d need to wager $1500, and if you bet $100 on the No. 16 seed and they won, you’d get $1200.

Point spreads

The point spread illustrates the gap in power between two teams. The odds on both teams here will be at -110 since the point spread is supposed to make teams “equal.”

• If a team is -10.5 points, they must win the game outright and win by 11 points or more.
• If a team is +10.5, they either need to win outright or, if they lose, lose by no more than 10 points.

Totals O/U

When betting on totals, also known as the over/under, you’re wagering on what you think the combined point total between both teams will be. Like the point spread, the line odds will be at or around -110. The point total will be the same for both the over and under wager.

Here’s an example of over/under lines:

• Over 109.5 (-110)
• Under 109.5 (-110)

Parlays

With parlays, you’re wagering on multiple games on one betslip. These contests are known as “l(fā)egs,” and for a parlay to win, you need all “l(fā)egs” to win.

For example:

• If you bet on Duke and Vanderbilt separately, you’ll have those odds independent of one another.
• However, if you parlay them together, not only will the odds reflect the combined value, but they'll also factor in the risk of your needing two contests to win to receive a payout.

March Madness betting sites also offer Same Game Parlays, meaning you could take events from a single game and bet on them together, such as the point spread, total, and a player prop.

Prop betting

The best way to describe prop bets is that they’re micro-events within a game. You’ll find game, team, and player props. Examples of this include a player's total points, rebounds, or assists.

An example would be something like this:

Butler Bulldogs G Ali Ali Total Points of 9.5: Over (-110); Under (-120)

Live betting on March Madness

If you forgot to wager on a game before it began, then no worries—you can take up live betting. With live betting, you’ll be able to wager on the game as it’s happening, but as you’d expect with the fast-paced nature of March Madness, the game changes constantly. This is the case with live betting as well—expect the odds to shift rapidly and be ready to make quick decisions.

Where is it legal to bet on March Madness?

Players can bet on March Madness in all legal sports betting states. However, there are certain states where wagering on in-state college teams or prop bets is prohibited. We’ll discuss that more below:

Sports Betting in the US - Where is is legal to place mobile wagers on sports in general: Interactive Map

March Madness & college gambling - How do you bet?

March Madness is a term used to describe the excitement of the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament. This tournament features 63 games across the main six rounds consisting of brackets, involving four regions with No. 1 to No. 16 seeds. With March Madness bracket betting, there are some tips and tricks that you use to maximize your chances of beating the books.

• Leverage bonuses and promotions: When this time of year rolls around, there are going to be bonuses and promotions available for everything from March Madness Sweet 16 on gambling to March Madness Final 4 online gambling. You may find enhanced welcome offers, parlay boosts, odds boosts, profit boosts, and other offers.
• Use live betting: Live betting is vital because you can use it in multiple ways to beat the books. You can see that the pregame point spread on something is six points, but maybe you’re more comfortable with 7.5 points. With live betting, you can monitor the game and wait for that to appear as the odds and lines update as the game progresses. Also, if you do wager before the game starts and it goes in a different direction, you can live bet to try and hedge your initial wager and minimize your losses.
• Don’t be afraid to wager on lower seeds: We see it all the time—there are lower-seeded teams that not only cover the point spread but win outright. A lot of this comes down to the research process, but don’t always assume that the higher-ranked team will pull off the win—there are Cinderella stories every year.

Conclusion - March Madness college gambling

March Madness college gambling is a long stretch, but there’s so much happening this time of year at online sportsbooks. From the odds for each game, the player props, live betting, bonuses, and promotions for new players. For each round of the tournament, there’s so much upside here for players to enjoy great returns.

Of course, it starts with making the right bets, but depending on the state you reside in, there could be multiple platforms for you to pick from that could be even more valuable to you.
This resource here should make your search for March Madness betting sites easier and show you what to look for.

Good luck padding your virtual wallet come March!