March Madness 2025: How To Watch, Betting Odds And The One Stat That Could Determine A Winner

The round of 64 NCAA Men's National Basketball Tournament games kick off Thursday with teams competing for a championship and fans competing for the near-impossible task of creating a perfect bracket.

Here's a look at the betting odds and favorites and the one stat that has correctly predicted winners since 2002.

How to Watch March Madness Games: Like past years, the 2025 March Madness games will be split for the first several rounds between media rights partners Paramount Global PARAPARAA and Warner Bros. Discovery WBD.

The first two days of the round of 64 games take place on March 20 and March 21 followed by games to decide the Sweet 16 on March 22 and March 23.

The games will air on CBS, truTV, TBS and TNT.

The Final Four semifinals will take place on April 5, with CBS having the rights to this year's games. The championship game will air on April 7, also on CBS.

Betting Odds: Here are the current betting odds for the favorites in the 2025 NCAA Men's National Basketball Tournament and their seeds, with odds from DraftKings Inc DKNG:

Duke (1): +320
Florida (1): +380
Auburn (1): +400
Houston (1): +600
Tenneessee (2): +2,200
Alabama (2): +2,200
Michigan State: (2): +2,500
St. Johns (2): +2,800
Texas Tech (3): +3,500
Maryland (4): +4,500

As expected, the one-seeds are the betting favorites followed by the two-seeds. A three-seed and four-seed rank ninth and tenth in the odds respectively where odds start to change based on paths to the Final 4 and difficulty of region instead of seeding.

Betting Stat to Know: When looking for a winner from the 64 teams, many people will pick a 1-seed or a 2-seed as they have won the most tournaments.

Since expanding to the field of 64, one through three seeds have won over 85% of the time, with other winners often having some luck, an easier than expected field or fitting into strong offensive and defensive efficiency rankings.

Dating back to 1999, Ken Pomeroy has provided basketball rankings known as KenPom that take into account offensive and defensive efficiencies and also predicts which teams would win in matchups.

Since 2002, all the teams to win the National Championship have ranked as a top 25 adjusted defensive efficiency and top 40 adjusted defensive efficiency based on the KenPom rankings.

That narrows down this year's list to the following teams, with their respective seeds and betting odds:

Houston (1): +600
Tennessee (2): +2,200
Duke (1): +320
Michigan State (2): +2,500
Maryland (4): +4,500
Florida (1): +380
Iowa State (3): +4,500
Auburn (1): +400
Clemson (5): +8,000
UCLA (7): +15,000
Louisville (8): +10,000
Mississippi (6): +16,000

Since 2002, all but two teams that won the championship ranked as a top 20 adjusted offensive efficiency and top 20 adjusted defensive efficiency team based on the KenPom rankings.

This would keep only the following teams in the running:

Houston: 2^nd defensive, 10^th offensive
Tennessee: 3^rd defensive, 18^th offensive
Duke: 4^th defensive, 3^rd offensive
Florida: 9^th defensive, 1^st offensive
Auburn: 12^th defensive, 2^nd offensive

Who the Public is Betting On: According to DraftKings, these are the most popular championship bets with the odds at the time of the tweet and the percent of betting handle.

Duke: +350, 20% of handle
Florida: +400, 10% of handle
Auburn: +350, 9% of handle
UConn: +7,500, 7% of handle
Alabama: +1,800, 6% of handle
Houston: +600, 6% of handle
Kansas: +7,500, 5% of handle
Kentucky: +5,500, 5% of handle
St. John's: +2,800, 4% of handle
Michigan State: +2,500, 4% of handle

The most bet on teams are three of the one-seeds, but then it quickly turns with Connecticut, who is an 8-seed listed fourth. The team is trying to win a third straight championship, but will face tougher odds given its seeding. Alabama ranks first among two-seeds as the fifth most bet on team.

On ESPN where millions fill out brackets with up to 25 allowed per person, these are the most bet on champions and the percent of bracket they’re picked in:

Duke: 25.1%
Florida: 21.3%
Auburn: 10.8%
Houston: 8.8%
St. John's: 4.9%
Michigan State: 4.5%

The public clearly loves Duke, Florida and Auburn as they rank as the top three for betting volume at DraftKings and on ESPN's tournament challenge page. On ESPN, these three one-seeds make up over 57% of brackets submitted.

Bracket Challenges: There are many ways to compete in bracket challenges with ESPN and other sports media outlets offering contests.

Social media platform X also has a Bracket Challenge that is offering a chance to win a trip to Mars if anyone has a perfect bracket. The cash prize is still $100,000 for first if there is no winner.

DraftKings and Pepsi return with the zero challenge with the goal of picking all 63 games wrong for a perfect imperfect bracket.

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