There are about 10 quintillion different ways to fill out a given March Madness bracket. The endless possibilities can be overwhelming for a bracket contest participant, but the good thing is you don’t need to know much about college basketball to do well in your pool. Case in point: Folks have won in a chalk-heavy year by simply picking the higher seed in every matchup.
A similar method of completing a bracket is to always pick the team that spends more money on its basketball program. In the first round, this usually means selecting favorites, since nearly every power conference team has a larger budget than every smaller conference team. In the later rounds, though, this strategy may yield more upset predictions.
We filled out financial brackets for 2025 using EADA data, which schools submit annually to the U.S. Department of Education (at least for now). The 2022-23 season is the most recent data available, so the numbers may not line up exactly with what this year’s teams are spending, but they should be directionally correct.
Disclaimer: We do not recommend putting money on this bracket. On the men’s side, it predicts that No. 3 seed Kentucky ($24.2 million budget) will defeat No. 8 seed Louisville ($19.1 million) in the men’s final. On DraftKings, those teams have +3000 and +4000 odds to reach the championship game, respectively, meaning the chances of that specific matchup occurring on April 7 are less than 1 in 1,000.
The other Final Four teams as predicted by expenses are more realistic: No. 1 seed Duke, which has the second-largest budget in the field as well as freshman phenom Cooper Flagg, and No. 3 seed Texas Tech, seventh in the country in KenPom rankings.
Here is the full men’s financial bracket:
In 2024, Sportico’s men’s financial bracket finished in the 57th percentile of all submissions on ESPN—not a bad result based on zero on-court analysis, but certainly not one that would win any pools. The formula correctly had UConn advancing to the final, but its predicted champion Duke bowed out in the Elite Eight.
Our women’s bracket fared much better, finishing in the 71st percentile in 2024 and correctly slotting in South Carolina as the national champion. The women’s financial bracket also finished in the 66th percentile in 2023, accurately picking No. 9 seed Miami to go to the Elite Eight.
Here is the full women’s financial bracket for 2025:
This year, the Gamecocks once again have the biggest budget in the women’s field at $10.8 million, even larger than the school’s men’s basketball budget. And according to Vegas, they also happen to be the tournament favorites.