For many of us, the question of how to make a March Madness bracket pool is going to come up here soon. It always seems like a great idea, but if you are the person who is tasked to do it, you might need a little help. That’s what we’re here for. We want you to spend less time setting up your pool or contest, and more on trying to pick out that perfect bracket!.
Figure out Who Wants to Play in Your Bracket Pool
The first big step is to figure out who might want to participate in a March Madness bracket pool with you. Typically, people will set them up with coworkers, fellow students, neighbors, small organizations, or communities. Depending on how you communicate across this group already, you can use Team Snap, text, email, FaceBook Messenger, etc to get the word out. This is more of a hey, this is coming type of email. Some basketball fans limit the number of contests they enter merely for tracking purposes. You can ask for them to confirm interest if you need an idea of numbers early, or just leave it as a heads up.
Identify the Service to Make a March Madness Bracket Pool
The next step you need to take is identify which Bracket contest service you want to use. Some of the more popular and easy to use ones are:
Each of the services lets you setup a group that you can run your contest from. The nice thing with using any of these (or other major service providers you might come across online), is they do all of the scoring and holding of the brackets. This eliminates any potential accusations of cheating if you plan to play in the bracket too. I really like that aspect of things.
Of course, you can also go old school and use a printed NCAA Tournament bracket like what we have posted up here to use. If you do this method, you just have to make sure you have entrants make copies of the brackets that they turn in to you. You also want to make sure you have the rules and scoring mechanism you plan to use before people turn in brackets and donate/pay money based on what the rules for that type of thing are in your local area.
Create a Group in the March Madness Bracket Pool Manager
If you haven’t done so already, you will want to create your group in the service’s bracket pool manager. This should be straightforward in the service that you are using. I recommend picking a unique name to your group or location that everyone can remember. Most of the services will also let you use your entries for their main contests too. If you plan to have an entry fee, you will want to have some type of payment address setup for people to use. Venmo, Cash App, and Paypal tend to me the most common out there. You also need to decide if people can submit multiple brackets ahead of time or not. This will probably depend on if you are doing a fund raiser or if you are simply doing a friendly between friends and family members.
How Do You Score Your March Madness Bracket Pool?
If you choose to run the manual method for your March Madness Bracket Pool, then you need to advertise the scoring system ahead of time. We recommend using the standard scoring system that experienced players will be used to. For this one, the scoring system is:
- Round of 64 – 1 Point for each correct pick
- Round of 32 – 2 Points for each correct pick
- Sweet 16 – 4 points for each correct pick.
- Elite 8 – 6 points for each correct pick.
- Final Four – 10 points for each correct pick.
- NCAA Championship Game – 16 points for correct pick.
- Tiebreaker – Pick the final score of the championship, or total points for the game.
For most small pools, the person who wins the bracket contest typically chooses the National champion. If everyone say picks the overall #1 seed to win, then whoever picks the most Final Four teams or the runner up would normally win.
When Should Your March Madness Pool Entry Deadline Be?
Most normal fans don’t even realize that the March Madness brackets are set until getting to school or work on Monday morning. The hard core fans will watch Selection Sunday’s broadcast and already have their brackets ready. As a result, most March Madness pools let people turn in brackets up until the tipoff of the first round of games on Thursday. This basically discounts the First Four game outcomes (you’re just picking that seed when doing your brackets prior to Thursday), but maximizes the opportunity for people to enter your contest. You should also make it clear if there is an entry fee when it has to be paid by or the entry is null and void. If you don’t do this, then there will be people who fail to pay and you will be stuck covering their part as the contest coordinator.
Determine How Much Money the Winner of the March Madness Pool Gets
This part is always a little tricky for first time pool coordinators. If you just promise a percentage of the pot, then you might not get as many entries. If you set a figure that is too high and participation is too low, then you end up paying money out of pocket. If you think you can get 25 or more people, then a good split is 70% to the champion, 20% to runner up, and 10% to third place. Sometimes people will give the last place finisher their money back too 🙂 No matter what, just over communicate about the details and rules upfront and you will have a great contest. Enjoy March Madness.
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