‘Mattress Mack’ makes $3.46M bet on Buccaneers over Chiefs
Mattress Mack is back and hopes the fourth time betting seven figures against the Kansas City Chiefs is the charm.
Houston furniture store owner Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale placed a $3.46 million straight bet to win $2.72 million on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers +3½ (-127) at DraftKings sportsbook in Colorado.
McIngvale flew Wednesday night to Colorado Springs, where he made the biggest reported bet yet on Super Bowl LV at the airport on DraftKings’ mobile app.
“DraftKings did a good job of making it fast, easy and convenient. And they obviously took a huge amount,” McIngvale told the Review-Journal on Thursday. “I landed in Colorado Springs, went to the terminal, stayed 40 minutes, made the bet, jumped back on the plane and flew back to Houston.”
McIngvale lost $3 million betting against the Chiefs in last season’s playoffs, dropping three separate $1 million money-line wagers on the Houston Texans in the divisional round, the Tennessee Titans in the AFC title game and the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl.
“They’re on the warpath against me,” he said with a laugh.
The 69-year-old lost $13 million in wagers on the Houston Astros in the 2019 World Series, including a $3.5 million bet placed at DraftKings sportsbook in Biloxi, Mississippi.
“Mack has been a great customer and is someone we have history with after taking his sizable wager on the Astros to win the World Series a couple seasons ago,” DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello said.
The World Series wagers were hedge bets against a promotion at his two Gallery Furniture stores that offered refunds on mattress set purchases of $3,000 or more if the Astros won it all.
Likewise, the Super Bowl wager is a hedge bet against a promotion that offers refunds of $3,000 or more if the Bucs win.
“The public is very excited. You can’t get a better matchup than Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes,” McIngvale said. “When I called the lawyer to work out the paperwork for the promotion, she asked which team the customers get. When I told her the Buccaneers, she said, ‘No. You can’t do that. They’ve got Tom Brady.’
“Whatever we can do to make things different and exciting extends the life of brick-and-mortar retailers like us.”
McIngvale has placed a bevy of bets in Las Vegas, including a $1 million wager at William Hill on the Astros to win the 2019 World Series. But he told the RJ he has no plans to fly to Las Vegas to place more bets on the Super Bowl.
“It depends on how the promotion goes,” he said. “I’m pretty good right now.”
A BetMGM bettor in Nevada placed a $2.3 million wager to win $2 million on Tampa Bay +3½ (-115) on Jan. 28 on their mobile app.
Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on Twitter.