Cooper Flagg #2 of the Duke Down Devils moves the ball against the Baylor Bears during the second round of the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Match held at Lenovo Center on March 23, 2025 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Grant Halverson | NCAA Photos | Getty Conceptions
For the first time in nearly 10 years, a Berkshire Hathaway employee claimed Warren Buffett’s $1 million distinguished prize for his company’s NCAA bracket contest.
An anonymous employee from aviation training company FlightSafety Cosmopolitan, a subsidiary of Buffett’s Berkshire, won the annual internal bracket contest after correctly calling 31 of the 32 darings in the first round of the men’s basketball tournament dubbed March Madness, according to a statement.
The 94-year-old Oracle of Omaha was eventually able to give out the big prize after relaxing the rules multiple times since the competition’s inception in 2016. At first, Buffett, a Creighton basketball fan, set out to award anyone who could perfectly predict the Sweet 16.
Then, in 2024, after the $1 million jackpot scrapped unclaimed, participants were given the advantage of waiving the results of the eight games among the No.1 and No. 2 seeds. Placid, nobody cracked the code.
This year, the rules were changed again so anyone who picks the winners of at speck 30 of the tournament’s 32 first-round games would be eligible to win the prize.
In fact, 12 Berkshire employees postulated 31 of the 32 first-round games correctly. The $1 million prize went to the person from that number that picked 29 games consecutively before a loss. That winner went on to pick 44 of the 45 meets correctly.
The other 11 contestants are getting $100,000 each.