If you are looking to win your NCAA office pool this year, entrepreneur John Corrigan is here to help – for a fee.
Corrigan has been testing his website BracketAnalytics.com since 2009 and will be making the service available for a $25 subscription for this year’s NCAA basketball tournament, which starts Thursday.
“We will upload the data, put in all our queries and put them through our algorithms and spit out risks for each match up,” Corrigan said.
Corrigan said they don’t pick the winners but evaluate the odds for each game using 60 different algorithms and data from the 26 year history of the tournament.
Corrigan is the owner of two other companies which he runs by himself. One is Customer Analytics Consulting, which specializes in advising software companies trying to sell software to big corporations. Corrigan also works as an independent wealth advisor.
But his biggest passion is the brackets.
According to a Careerbuilder.com survey, one in five office workers participate in an office pool. Corrigan found in his research that about 58 million people filled out a bracket for an office pool, and that 11 percent of those bet $50 or more.
Based on his market research, Corrigan expects a worst case scenario of 800 subscribers, and a best case of 8,000. Corrigan said he is using Facebook ads to promote the website and is expecting 14.4 million people to see it, of those he thanks 21,500 will click on it to visit his site.
Corrigan, who holds a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Penn State, is big into math, and is constantly tweaking his calculations to improve the results.
“On my bracket last year I got two out of the four Final Four teams,” Corrigan said. “We went back and looked to found out why.”
One of the teams he had picked but didn’t make it was Wisconsin, which lost to Cornell in the second round.
“Wisconsin got 33 percent of their total points from 3 point goals. So we went back and looked at all the teams that rely on field goals and found only 8 percent of those teams have made the Final Four,” Corrigan said.
Now that bit of data will go into the entire calculation.
Later this year Corrigan said he plans to offer the same analytics for college football and launch BowlAnalytics this fall.
Right now however, it is all about March Madness.
“When the brackets come out Sunday night, I plan on pulling an all-nighter,” Corrigan said.
If you are looking to win your NCAA office pool this year, entrepreneur John Corrigan is here to help – for a fee.
Corrigan has been testing his website BracketAnalytics.com since 2009 and will be making the service available for a $25 subscription for this year’s NCAA basketball tournament, which starts Thursday.
“We will upload the data, put in all our queries and put them through our algorithms and spit out risks for each match up,” Corrigan said.
Corrigan said they don’t pick the winners but evaluate the odds for each game using 60 different algorithms and data from the 26 year history of the tournament.
Corrigan is the owner of two other companies which he runs by himself. One is Customer Analytics Consulting, which specializes in advising software companies trying to sell software to big corporations. Corrigan also works as an independent wealth advisor.
But his biggest passion is the brackets.
According to a Careerbuilder.com survey, one in five office workers participate in an office pool. Corrigan found in his research that about 58 million people filled out a bracket for an office pool, and that 11 percent of those bet $50 or more.
Based on his market research, Corrigan expects a worst case scenario of 800 subscribers, and a best case of 8,000. Corrigan said he is using Facebook ads to promote the website and is expecting 14.4 million people to see it, of those he thanks 21,500 will click on it to visit his site.
Corrigan, who holds a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Penn State, is big into math, and is constantly tweaking his calculations to improve the results.
“On my bracket last year I got two out of the four Final Four teams,” Corrigan said. “We went back and looked to found out why.”
One of the teams he had picked but didn’t make it was Wisconsin, which lost to Cornell in the second round.
“Wisconsin got 33 percent of their total points from 3 point goals. So we went back and looked at all the teams that rely on field goals and found only 8 percent of those teams have made the Final Four,” Corrigan said.
Now that bit of data will go into the entire calculation.
Later this year Corrigan said he plans to offer the same analytics for college football and launch BowlAnalytics this fall.
Right now however, it is all about March Madness.
“When the brackets come out Sunday night, I plan on pulling an all-nighter,” Corrigan said.
John’s breadth and of course depth of skills is pretty amazing. In the few but very worthwhile conversations that I have had with him the conversation was most enlightening.
I imagine that I am among the very few who are not in an office pool or for that matter ANY non-offce pool engaged in following “March Madness” but curiousity may well haveme hooked to follow John’s endeavors in this arena (pardon the pun).
Go John!!
Well. I tried to log in to the site after reading this article and unfortunately I kept getting a MYSQL error. Please fix this on the site and I will give you my 25 bucks!
Rob
Everyone, Thank you for your kind words and encouragement. In regards to Rob’s comment about the MYSQL errors, there are a few user pc issues that have been known to create similar errors. The most common would be IE6. And the second, low memory configurations on older computers. However! We were able to identify a possible issue that can cause a similar issue and have taken corrective steps. We value everyone’s input and recommend anyone with an issue to email [email protected] with technical issues and user account concerns. Additional comments or suggestions can be addressed by [email protected]. Thanks again to… Read more »
Seriously? I knew the 3 pt stat “epiphany” from watching Sportscenter! I’m all for entrepreneurship, John, so good luck. One obvious question-if you provide the same data to all subscribers, won’t they all basically evaluate the same picks? You ARE smart to collect $25 per pop (a “sure thing”) as oppossed to having enough confidence in your data & algorithems to just quietly take a trip to Vegas & win BIG by using the selections you’ve opted to market…….. Apologize for what will be perceived as the first “negative” comment. While I DO root for virtually every entrepreneur, I just… Read more »
Peter— The 3 point stat goes a lot deeper than that. It needs to be looked at for each round and I have no idea how long that Sportscenter has been looking at it, but I noticed it in 1994 when Marquette upset Kentucky and I have used it as a guide ever since. It only reached “statistical significance'” in 2004 after UConn beat Duke and JJ Redick in the Final 4. Regarding Vegas, the Vegas folks are pretty smart, and I have been out there a couple times for the tournament. It is a zoo. My favorite wager is… Read more »
John,
I appreciate the spirit in which you accepted my comments.
You’ve obviously done your homework & I wish the best in your venture.