Elon Musk offers basketball fans 'chance to go to Mars' if they beat incredibly hard challenge nobody has ever won

Every March, college basketball takes centre stage in the American sports landscape.

March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament, is renowned as one of the most exciting and unpredictable competitions in the sporting world.

Unlike the NBA – where the post-season playoffs are made up of best-of-seven series to determine a champion – March Madness is a single-game elimination bracket.

This means that, not only does the NCAA tournament showcase the best up-and-coming talent destined for the NBA – such a likely future No.1 draft pick Cooper Flagg, who currently stars for the Duke Blue Devils – it also throws up the increased prospect of smaller schools getting one over on the sport's traditional powers, with major upsets a feature of the event.

Duke basketball star Cooper Flagg (Getty)

And each year, fans in their millions follow along by completing their own prediction bracket. Successfully predicting all seven rounds of the tournament is a near-impossible task.

In fact, no one has ever managed it. The odds of filling out a perfect March Madness prediction bracket – even for someone with a strong understanding of college basketball – are estimated to be around 120 billion to one.

But if anyone is lucky enough to pull off the unlikely feat this year, there is an extra incentive on offer courtesy of Elon Musk and X.

The social media platform owned by the world's richest man has partnered with Uber Eats for the "X Bracket Challenge".

And the winner – if there is to be one – is being offered the chance to go to Mars on a future Space X mission.

“We’re not just hosting a bracket challenge; we’re redefining how fans connect, compete and dream big, all on a platform that’s already the heartbeat of real-time sports culture,” said Andrew Musk, Elon's younger brother and the site’s lead product engineer.

For anyone who doesn't fancy risking their life on a Mars mission that, at this stage, is entirely hypothetical, however, there is an alternative proze package on offer that includes $250,000, a year of free Starlink internet service and the chance to train like an astronaut at the Space X centre.

And in recognition of the slim chance of anyone actually predicting a perfect bracket, there is a $100,000 prize for the closest predictor.