FYP.

Bribing basketball players historically has fallen somewhere outside likely legal guidelines, do so and you could win a free vacation for 1 to 10.

See,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCNY_point_shaving_scandal

There is a company, SCA, that has done quite well over the years with that "laying off contest risk" business model.

Typically, they will write insurance on matters ranging from a hole-in-one promotion up through online poker promotions.

It allows a promoter to quantify and expense the cost of such marketing contests.

Let me rephrase my suggestion. I believe there will be about 100K entrants simply picking the lowest seeds. Those entrants are incredibly dumb because they not only split all those ways they also don't always pick the favorites. There will probably be almost as many entrants that pick the actual favorites based on the bookies power line. That's better than the first alternative but will still only be worth about 10K I think. Now suppose you can identify a few games where you think the underdog has a one third chance of winning but only one in five will choose them. If you deviate from the all favorite ticket in three games you cut your chances to 1/27 of what it was but multiply your prize by 125. Over a million bucks. Anyone here who starts thinking about marginal utility when they can get 124-1 on a 26-1 shot for 10k that's dropped in your pocket should be ashamed of themselves. And I believe this is a conservative estimate of opportunities. I think that there are some deviations from the all favorite ticket where the dog is played far less often than its chances indicate.

NOTE: It is important to realize that this deviation should only be taken into account as regards otherwise almost all favorite tickets. For instance a 20% shot will surely be played more often than 20% of ALL tickets because of the amateurs betting. But they have no chance at all. However among the tickets that are betting virtually all favorites that 20% shot is likely to be underplayed.

Again I realize that this is really just an academic discussion as far as this promotion is concerned. No one is hitting a 5 billion to one shot. But its important if you play something like these Vegas no points promotions.

The owner of SCA is good friends with Buffett.

Even without bribes this promotion might start getting heat. Imagine if someone is alive with eight teams left and his brother in law' barber's son is a guard on one of the teams he bet against.

I've had one small glass of wine. I am lost.

What?

If Buffet is requiring an email address and/or address with entry, could this just be a really inexpensive way to datamine millions of college basketball fans and/or cheap way to raise the profile/brand of Warren Buffet?

Exactly what I figured. Getting 10 million unique U.S. email addresses – pretty much all of which will be legit – is certainly the angle.

Others have stated that this is a "marketing fail" because the contest has thus far been connected to Buffett rather than Quicken Loans. I suppose that's true in the short run. But it will be Quicken that sends out all the junk mail to the addresses it harvests.

It does when there a lot more than one person who is trying to win.