FanFolio turns March Madness into a stock market where each team has a price based on how far the market expects it to go. A first-round exit pays the minimum. A championship run pays the maximum. The bracket creates the volatility.
March Madness is single elimination — one loss and you are out. That means every game can dramatically reprice the entire field. A 12-seed upsetting a 5-seed does not just affect those two teams; it reprices every team in that region because the path to the Final Four just changed.
On FanFolio, payouts are tied to the round a team is eliminated in. Teams that exit in the first round pay the least. Teams that make the Final Four pay significantly more. The champion pays the maximum. So the further you think a team can go, the more its stock is worth to you right now.
Most bracket pools lock your picks before the tournament starts. FanFolio lets you trade throughout — buy a Cinderella after its first upset when the market still hasn't fully adjusted, or sell a favorite that drew a brutal second-round matchup.
Because the field shrinks every round, surviving teams become more scarce and their stock prices tend to rise. The game is reading which teams the market is over- or undervaluing at each stage of the bracket.