Houston furniture store owner Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale is aiming to become the biggest winner in the history of legal sports betting.
On Monday, McIngvale made a $2-million bet on the Houston Astros to win the World Series, which was placed at +533 odds and would pay out $10.66 million if successful. The wager was dropped at the Barstool Sportsbook in the L’Auberge Casino in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The latest play is in addition to a $3-million wager on the Astros to win the World Series at Caesars Sportsbook, which McIngvale placed at +1,000 odds and could garner him $30 million. Mattress Mack also made another $1-million bet on the Astros in May at WynnBET at +1,200 odds, with a potential payout of $12 million.
McIngvale’s total wagering on an Astros’ World Series win now stands at $6 million. Should Houston prevail, it would earn Mattress Mack a combined payout of $52.6 million, the largest legal sports betting win of all time, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
The big bet is in for the Astros to win it all in 2022! Thank you @barstoolsports for taking the bet, & @LAubergeLC for your help! Take part in the Astros Win It All 2X promotion to get DOUBLE YOUR MONEY BACK on your mattress purchase of $3K+ if the Astros win it all in 2022! pic.twitter.com/psP5hcFTUG
— @MattressMack (@MattressMack) July 19, 2022
The method to Mack's madness
But McIngvale is not your typical high roller. He is effectively executing a hedging strategy by placing multi-million dollar bets at retail and online sportsbooks as a means of attracting customers while covering potential losses from his unique promotional schemes. This year, McIngvale is offering customers who buy $3,000 or more of furniture double their money back in the event the Astros win the World Series.
"The promotion is going very good,” McIngvale told the Review-Journal. "I needed more capacity to sell my furniture. We sold through the first bets."
The 71-year-old McIngvale has helped build up his Gallery Furniture business — which he founded in 1981 with his wife, Linda — on the back of his promotional efforts, which have earned him plenty of publicity.
Last Wednesday, for example, McIngvale was one of the main attractions at the SBC Summit North America conference in New Jersey. Appearing on stage for a discussion wearing cowboy boots and a custom Houston Astros jersey, he told ESPN reporter David Purdum that "winners are the best advertising in the world."
McIngvale also doubled down on the essence of his promotional strategy.
"Ninety percent of every bet I make is angling towards some promotion,” he said. “These promotions bring in a better-quality customer, a customer who spends more money, who is more affluent and more creditworthy."
In his remarks to conference attendees, McIngvale explained that his wild bets are essentially publicity stunts intended to help his furniture stores fend off competition from online sellers such as Amazon and Wayfair.
"Unless we do something that’s fun for the customers, we’re going to go out of business," McIngvale said.
However, the furniture mogul appears to be in no danger of insolvency. According to figures provided in an April Forbes profile of McIngvale, his three Gallery Furniture stores in Houston generated over $230 million in revenue in 2021, an increase of more than 40% from 2019.
Laying off risk
McIngvale’s $6-million Astros wager is also just the latest in a series of high-stakes bets that allow him to lay off the risk of millions of dollars in losses stemming from his promotions.
Within the last year alone, McIngvale lost $4 million in wagers on the Astros to win the 2021 World Series (they lost to the Atlanta Braves in six games), $9.5 million in moneyline bets at Caesars on the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl (they lost to the Los Angeles Rams), before doubling down and netting $12.5 million by correctly betting on Kansas to win the NCAA men's basketball championship after losing $1 million on a previous bracket bet.
But that major score merely eased the pain of $25 million in gambling losses dating back to the 2021 Super Bowl, which he presumably made up in furniture sales.
According to Forbes, Mattress Mack is hardly a madman when it comes to calculating risk. For example, McIngvale placed his Kansas bet at +190 before the Jayhawks played Villanova in the Final Four. Had he waited until No. 1 seed Kansas had defeated Villanova in the semi-final round, the odds would have been –190 or worse, and this would have obliged him to wager $25 million to win $12 million.
"There’s no advantage in doing this if you take a negative proposition wager to cover the losses," McIngvale told Forbes.
And in the case of this year's Super Bowl bet, McIngvale's $9.5 million "loss" on the Bengals reportedly allowed him to avoid refunding about $20 million worth of furniture sales.
"The Bengals lost, and it broke my heart because I wanted to see the customers get their money back, but it didn’t work out that way," McIngvale told ESPN after the Super Bowl. "But you know what? We live to play another day. You win some, you lose some, and sometimes you get rained out. I got up this morning, put on my big boy britches, and went to work."
In the meantime, McIngvale's $6-million Astros wager is looking good following the All-Star break in the MLB season.
The Astros are currently at 59-32, the third-best record in the majors behind only the New York Yankees (64-28) and Los Angeles Dodgers (60-30). Another element in McIngvale's favor is that the Astros are proven winners, having reached the American League Championship Series the last five years in a row.
"The Astros are very hot," he told the Review-Journal. "We’ll see what happens in the second half."
