NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament - Get tickets

The NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship (get NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament tickets) is a single elimination tournament held each spring featuring 65 college basketball teams in the United States. Colloquially known as March Madness (as the tournament takes place mainly during the month of March), the tournament takes place over 3 weeks at sites across the country, and the national semifinals (the Final Four) have become one of the nation's most prominent sporting events.

Since its inception in 1939, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament has built a legacy that includes dynasty teams and dramatic stories. All games of the tournament are broadcast on the CBS broadcast television network in the United States except for the Opening Round which aired on TNN in 2001 and ESPN since 2002.

Tournament format

A total of 65 teams qualify for the NCAA Basketball Tournament (get NCAA Basketball Tournament tickets) played in March and April. 31 of the teams earn automatic bids by winning their respective conference tournaments while the remaining teams are granted at-large bids, which are extended by the NCAA Selection Committee. The tournament is split into 4 regions and each region has teams seeded 1–16. The best team in each region plays the #16 team, the #2 team plays the #15, and so on. The effect of this seeding structure ensures that the better a team is seeded, the worse-seeded their opponents will be.