What Is Bracket Betting?

Any sporting event that has what can be described as a straight knockout phase – think the NFL playoffs and March Madness – features a bracket format to decide who will progress to the next stage.

In the NFL playoffs, there are two brackets — one each for the NFC and AFC Conferences, which kick off with the wild card round, before progressing through the divisional playoffs, championship games, and the Super Bowl. You can wager on the outcome of these draws courtesy of bracket betting, which lets you place bets on the teams you believe will progress through the brackets with the most success.

So what is bracket betting, and how does it work?

Sometimes, predicting the outcome of playoff and knockout style games is tough. In fact, the predictions you make for the bracket can be blown out of the water after just one game. But the beauty of bracket betting is that it allows you to have more than one shot at correctly guessing how each of the brackets will shape up, while profiting from doing so.

In short, you’re wagering on the teams you think will reach each stage of the bracket. If we use March Madness as an example, there are lines available for the Sweet 16, Elite Eight, Final Four, and, of course, the championship game.

So if you’ve built out your brackets, and have identified teams you expect to make a deep run into the business end of a tournament, placing your bracket bets is one way to make it count.

NFL Playoffs Bracket Betting

Will the favorites prevail, or will an underdog enjoy their Cinderella moment? This is just one of the questions posed when placing your brackets bets, with longer odds offered on the unlikely outsiders beating the better teams and winning their bracket. Or you could play it safe, wagering on the higher-seeded teams to win through to the latter stages of their bracket in the AFC or NFC.

There are pretty much always upsets and giant killings in the bracket phase. The Kansas City Chiefs, the number three seed, beat the Bills (second seed) and the Ravens (top seed) in 2023-24, while the Bengals defeated the Bills in 2022-23.

There’s a chance that the teams ranked first and second in each conference will make it to the championship game, but experience tells, us that there’s usually at least one shock result in every NFL playoff bracket.

Expect the unexpected. That may just be the best approach with your bracket bets.

NBA Playoffs Bracket Betting

The same rules apply in the NBA playoffs, where big seeds and much-fancied franchises have fallen by the wayside at the key part of the season.

Miami Heat beat three higher-seeded teams on their way to the NBA Finals in 2023, including the best team in the Eastern Conference - the Milwaukee Bucks - in the first round. And the Lakers achieved something similar in the west, reaching the conference finals from a seeding of seven, downing the Grizzlies and the Warriors along the way. Those backing the most expected and predictable brackets would have fallen by the wayside then, opening the door to those with more obscure choices to profit from their bracket bets.

Later on, we’ll look at different bracket betting strategies that you can use to maximize your upside. But for now, the message is to analyze each game deeply to try and unveil underdog stories in the making before they happen.

March Madness Bracket Betting

One of the most exciting avenues for your bracket bets is March Madness, the annual college basketball extravaganza that features a whopping 68 teams in its bracket phase.

It’s true that most sportsbooks won’t offer bracket bets for the First Four games. But once they’re completed the bracket bet odds will be unveiled, with each stage - from the regional first rounds to the National Championship game - catered for.

Anyone that follows NCAA basketball closely won't need us to tell them how often upsets happen in the March Madness brackets. In 2023, the Final Four was seeded four, five (Midwest), five (South), and nine. The best-ranked teams fell much earlier in their respective brackets.

Colleges seeded six, seven, and eight have all gone on to win the National Championship game in the past, while even those seeded 13-15 have made it to the Sweet 16. Don’t be too hasty in backing the big names in your bracket bets — the history books confirm that it’s best to keep an open mind.

Other Bracket Bets

Other sports offer bracket betting opportunities, too. Consider the four tennis Grand Slams: the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. These all feature open bracket draws, so you can trace the potential route of each player to the final.

The same is true in soccer, where tournaments like the World Cup, Champions League, and the MLS playoffs also have a bracket-style draw that allows bettors to try and predict who will progress and who will bow out of the competition early.

Remember, the brackets for all of these major sporting events are readily available online, so you can take a look at your leisure and try to predict who will make it through the draw. Then, you can place your bracket bets accordingly.

How to Win Bracket Bets

Even if you’re a master of "bracketology", there’s a chance you'll get some of the winners and losers of their games wrong. Recent editions of the NFL playoffs and March Madness are testament to that.

So, one of the bracket betting strategies that’s worth exploring is hedging, which is a term you may have seen used in stock trading and the like. Hedging is where you look to minimize your risk, which in the case of bracket bets is backing a team that loses early on. You can hedge your bracket bets by wagering on a few different potential outcomes — perhaps if a number four seed is playing the number five in a game most expect to be close, you can back the fourth seed in one bracket bet and the fifth in another.

There are different formats of bracket-based gaming too, so getting to know the rules of each game certainly makes sense. In some bracket games, you score points for getting each winning team in a bracket correct, with the player scoring the most points taking a prize.

When it comes to bracket betting, you may instead want to wager on a team to reach a certain stage of the tournament, perhaps the Final Four in March Madness or the AFC Conference final. You'll get shorter odds on the favorites (i.e. the top seeds), and longer odds on the outsiders. And it’s worth recalling just how rare it is for the number one seed to play the number two in a championship game. That means that betting on outsiders, albeit teams that still have plenty of quality on their roster, can be a useful play in bracket betting.

Consider too each team’s form as they head into the bracket phase. The league standings only provide part of the puzzle; momentum is so vital in sport, so consider how each team has played in the weeks immediately prior to the brackets getting underway.

When you’re plotting your brackets, start at the championship game and work backwards rather than starting with the first round and progressing forward. This allows you to be more closely attuned to the long game, because if there are two or three teams you consider the most likely to win the championship, you can more easily predict who they will beat near the end of the competition.

Remember, as a rule, the betting odds get longer with each new stage of the bracket. For example, if you wanted to bet on the Chiefs, they have much shorter odds to reach the divisional playoffs than they are the Super Bowl. Why? Because the latter requires them to win more games.

You can also score meaty odds on huge outsiders to reach even a mere respectable stage of the bracket, e.g. a number ten seed to make the Elite Eight at March Madness. This is another way to hedge your risk and still profit, as opposed to backing them to win the National Championship outright.

It still pays to be respectful of the higher seeds, because they have played their way to such a status in their regular season performances. But the beauty of the bracket is that, sometimes, a lower seed can actually be a better team (on game day) than an opponent that's ranked higher.