Prediction market platform Kalshi has launched an eye-watering $1bn perfect-bracket challenge for the 2026 edition of NCAA March Madness, a US college basketball tournament.
The free-to-enter contest is certainly an eye-catching customer acquisition drive due to the massive sum – though as made clear in the announcement, Kalshi doesn’t expect anyone to be successful.
The odds of managing to correctly predict all 63 games in the tournament are extremely long – a simplified equation in which every game is a 50/50 coin flip would make the likelihood of success about 1 in 9.2 quintillion.
Expert knowledge would shorten those slightly, and Tarek Mansour has posted that he believes the chances of success are more like 1 in 120 billion.
The Kalshi announcement makes clear that users are more likely to be struck by lightning than win, and the odds of success are roughly equivalent to searching for one grain of sand from all of Earth’s beaches and deserts and getting it right on the first try.
It seems the prediction market operator has taken inspiration from Warren Buffet, who backed a similar $1bn perfect-bracket challenge with Quicken Loans.
No one won on that occasion – as Mansour has said on LinkedIn: “Your odds are very low… but they’re not zero.”
To enter the competition, users will have to create an account on Kalshi and there is no obligation to trade or deposit.
The prize money itself – both the potential, if far-fetched, $1bn, and the guaranteed $1m – is backed by SIG Parametrics of the Susquehanna International Group.
Kalshi’s own valuation as a company based on the last publicised funding round was $11bn
