Warren Buffett finds a winner in million dollar March Madness challenge
Warren Buffett’s infamous March Madness bracket challenge finally has a winner.
WASHINGTON — For the first time ever, Warren Buffett’s March Madness bracket pool has a million dollar winner.
A Berkshire Hathaway employee won $1 million after correctly predicting the winners for 31 out of 32 games in round one of the men’s March Madness tournament, according to The Wall Street Journal and multiple outlets.
Buffett, the 94-year-old CEO of the company, offered employees the chance to win $1 million if they correctly predicted 30 out of the 32 first-round game winners in this year’s NCAA tournament.
The March Madness competition at Berkshire Hathaway is an annual one, but this year the stakes were lowered a bit.
In the past, employees needed to correctly predict all 32 first-round games. The 2025 winner, who works for FlightSafety International, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, is one of twelve employees who correctly predicted 31 outcomes.
However, the FlightSafety International employee received the $1 million because they went the furthest without getting any games wrong, correctly predicting the first 29. The eleven runner-ups will each receive $100,000.
“I feel good that we sort of hit the sweet spot on this one,” Buffett told The Wall Street Journal.
“I don’t follow sports like I used to,” Buffett, who didn’t fill out his own bracket, said to the outlet. “I hope I haven’t forgotten as much about business as I’ve forgotten about sports,” he added with a laugh.
Has there ever been a perfect March Madness bracket?
The NCAA has previously claimed that no one has ever completed a perfect bracket. This year is no different, as no perfect brackets remain after Saturday’s games.
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.
It’s believed that the closest anyone has gotten to a perfect bracket occurred in 2019.