This year American gamblers will bet more than $9 billion on the NCAA Basketball Tournament, with the majority of bets taking place in an illegal manner.
The claim of $9 billion in bets was made by the Pennive publication, who used facts from the AGA. Americans will up roughly $240 million in Nevada's legal sportsbooks, with the rest of bets being placed through illegal means. Most of the illegal bets will be placed through brackets, in which punters predict winners from opening rounds of the tournament all the way to the championship. It is estimated that 70 million brackets will be submitted this year.
The report also goes on to state that lost productivity during the basketball tournament will cost employers more than $1.2 billion.
Currently sportsbetting is only allowed in the state of Nevada in the United States, but states are beginning to challenge that law. New Jersey is currently pressing its sportsbetting laws in Federal court, where it continually keeps looking for a loophole to make sportsbetting legal in the Garden State.