17.3 million brackets at the ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge

The ESPN Men’s Tournament Challenge has this year collected 17.3 million completed brackets for March Madness, the highest number ever and an increase on the previous record of 17.2 million from 2019.

In addition, the game also set new single-day records for sign-ups on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. At the peak period of entry, fans were registering more than 30,000 brackets per minute; highlighting just how popular free-to-play predictor games are in the US and what could potentially be achieved within sports betting during key sporting moments.

Another highlight has been with the ESPN Tournament Challenge App which has been fully engaged with throughout this week. As such it has reached the number one spot for free apps on Apple’s App Store, ranking ahead of TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.

The Men’s Tournament Challenge “People’s Bracket” reflects the percentage of people selecting each match-up during the tournament. Within this challenge, this week has unsurprisingly seen fans backing the number one seeds Arizona, Gonzaga and Kansas to make it to the Final Four, more than any other team.

As a breakdown of figures, the two most popular groups for the Men’s Tournament Challenge are ESPN LA Bracket Challenge 2022 and McDonald’s x TC Group, both of which encourage over 300,000 brackets each. Jay Bilas’ Group sees more than 200,000, and Automated Madness and Joe Lunardi’s Group each total more than 100,000.

At the same time as the Men’s Tournament Challenge is the Women’s Tournament Challenge, which is closing tomorrow. It will accept brackets until just prior to the commencing of the game between Miami and South Florida.

As a concluding motivation to join in, fans who achieve the top-scoring entry in any Tournament Challenge round will be automatically entered into a competition offering a $100,000 grand prize, equally a total of $200,000 in total prizes across both the Men’s and Women’s Tournament Challenges.