How much money is bet on March Madness? The 2024 NCAA tournament is expected to generate billions.
CBSN
March Madness — the National Collegiate Athletics Association's (NCAA) college basketball tournament — kicked off this week, and Americans are betting big money on which school will be crowned champions in 2024.
U.S. bettors are expected to wager more than $2.72 billion on this year's men's and women's national tournaments using legalized sportsbooks, according to the American Gaming Association (AGA). That's about twice as much the amount of bets placed on the Super Bowl, according to the NCAA.
Why are Americans betting so much? There are three reasons, said Dave Forman, the association's vice president of research: more people are expected to bet on the women's tournament this year than in previous years, more states have legalized online sports wagering — allowing more bettors to join the fray, and more residents in states that already have legalized sports betting are placing bets.

Air travelers faced hundreds of flight cancellations and thousands of delays on Tuesday in the wake of powerful storms that struck the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard. Many airports also continue to struggle with disruption from reduced staffing at often-jammed security checkpoints amid a partial government shutdown that has lasted more than a month. Mark Strassmann contributed to this report. In:

The race to fill the seat of retiring Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin has been heating up in the days leading up to Tuesday's 2026 Democratic primary and could set the tone for other midterm primaries on issues like President Trump's deportation policies and outside spending. And another factor in the race is Gov. JB Pritzker's attempt at powerbrokering: he's given his endorsement and millions in campaign funds to his lieutenant governor, Julianna Stratton. In:

A man who was accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6 attack in 2021 is asking a judge to dismiss the criminal charges against him, arguing he is covered by President Trump's sweeping pardons of alleged Jan. 6 rioters.

The Cuban government is planning to allow Cuban nationals who live abroad — including in the U.S. — to invest in companies on the island, a top government official told NBC News in an interview that aired Monday, as the country faces economic collapse and immense pressure from the Trump administration.









