CHICAGO -- How much work will be lost from participation in March Madness office pools, as well as the watching of the NCAA college basketball tournament games on the job?

The question arises now that team selections have been announced.

The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said employers could see as much as $1.7 billion in lost productivity over the next few weeks, as the tournament proceeds.

The calculation includes estimates on participation in the pools, worker wages and the amount of work time possibly spent on basketball-related activities.

Separately, CEO John Challenger noted that some businesses are trying to limit the ability of workers to stream video on their work computers to keep their systems from seeing too much bandwidth wasted.

LazerWager, an online sports, casino and entertainment gambling Web site, said in a news release that 27 percent of American employees participate in March Madness office pools. The majority of these workers are men; only 8 percent of American women have participated in the workplace pool.

Surveys show that almost half of them spend at least 30 minutes at work to fill out their brackets. With bracket pools ranging from $5 to $25 per person, office pools are now worth an incredible $2.5 billion, the LazerWager news release said.

Meanwhile, LazerWager said between $80 million and $90 million will be bet on the games in Las Vegas.

"Besides Super Bowl week, this is easily the busiest time of year for our office," said Dan Del Gato, director of operations at LazerWager.com.