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March Madness is here with the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament field officially revealed on Sunday, March 17. Pepsi is taking things up a notch to highlight the near impossible odds of a perfect bracket.
What Happened: After several play-in games, a field of 64 teams will compete for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship beginning Thursday, March 21. The winner will likely be a team that excels in both offensive and defensive efficiency.
Beverage giant PepsiCo (NYSE:PEP) doesn't want to know who will win the March Madness bracket. Instead, the beverage company is hosting a challenge for fans to predict the teams that are most likely to lose each game and the overall tournament.
Pepsi has teamed up with sports betting company DraftKings Inc (NASDAQ:DKNG) on the "Zero Right Bracket Challenge."
The challenge is available for free to users with a deadline of submittal before the games begin Thursday. Contestants are awarded points on a graduated scale as the tournament progresses, with the more incorrect picks being the best thing in the challenge.
If a participant accurately predicts the losing team in each game, achieving a perfectly incorrect bracket, they will win $100,000. Should no one accomplish this feat, the $100,000 prize will go to the participant(s) with the highest score from correct predictions, with the possibility of the prize being shared if there are multiple top scorers.
"Pepsi got zero right, can you?" a tagline for the contest reads. The challenge highlights Pepsi Zero and other zero sugar drinks from the beverage company including Mountain Dew Zero, Mug Roo Beer Zero and Starry Zero.
Related Link: DraftKings Q4 Earnings Highlights: Revenue Miss, EPS Beat, Jackpocket Digital Lottery Acquisition, Guidance Increase And More
Why It's Important: As previously shared by Benzinga, the odds of having a perfect bracket, using a coinflip and 50/50 odds of each matchup is 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Using seeds and trends and knowledge of the bracket, the odds improve slightly to 1 in 128 billion.
Currently, the furthest a contestant has made it with a perfect bracket was having the first 49 games correctly predicted in 2019. There are 63 games played in the tournament, not counting the play-in games.
Big prizes have been offered for a perfect bracket previously.
BetMGM, a unit of Entain and MGM Resorts International (NYSE:MGM) offered a $10 million prize for anyone with a perfect bracket In 2022, Bally's Corp offered a $100 million prize for a perfect bracket.
Even investing legend Warren Buffett got in on the action with a contest launched in 2014 offering a $1 billion prize. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (NYSE:BRK)(NYSE:BRK) partnered with Quicken Loans and Yahoo Sports at the time on the perfect bracket challenge.
Pepsi's challenge will come with improved odds as users can select teams to advance further into the tournament that may not reach that particular game. For example, a person already has a great chance of picking a team to win the tournament incorrectly as only one of the 64 teams will be the winner, leaving 63 choices that will be correct in Pepsi's Zero Right Bracket Challenge.
The tough task for most of the Pepsi challenge will be the first couple rounds of predicting the losers.
The March Madness games will air on channels owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) and Paramount Global Inc (NASDAQ:PARA)(NASDAQ:PARAA) with the first round games being played on March 21 and March 22.
Image generated using artificial intelligence with Midjourney with a image from Pepsi.
