A new contest from Quicken Loans makes Powerball look like small change.
The financial services brand is offering $1 billion to the person who completes a perfect bracket in this year's NCAA March men's college basketball championship. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway will insure the prize. Anyone who completes that feat will get their cash in 40 annual installments of $25 million. If you can't wait, you can get $500 million in a lump sum.
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However, as USA Today recently noted, the odds of actually completing a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion. You would have a better chance of hitting four holes-in-one in a single round of golf. Alternatively, if everyone in the U.S. filled out a bracket, there would be a perfect one every 400 years.
But hey, you never know.
If you fall short of the prize, you can still get $100,000 for the most accurate "imperfect" brackets. Quicken Loans will reward 20 such prizes. Registration for the contest begins March 3 and runs through March 19. Submissions will be limited to one per household.
While Quicken Loans gets a boatload of free publicity from the contest, what's in it for Buffett? First off, as mentioned, the odds of a payout are minuscule. Meanwhile, the PR value of Buffett's involvement was probably part of the deal, meaning favorable terms for the Oracle of Omaha. It doesn't hurt that Buffett is also a big sports fan, though he appears more partial to football than basketball.