It must be nice to say goodbye to $4.7 million in five days and shrug your shoulders. That’s what Jim McIngvale did. The Houston furniture store owner known as Mattress Mack for his outlandish wagers put down $2.7 million on Alabama January 10 to win the college football title game. The Tide lost to Georgia.
On January 15, he placed $2 million in futures bets that the Patriots would win the Super Bowl. They never made it out of wild-card game as the Buffalo Bills walloped New England, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
McIngvale placed the bets on Alabama at Caesars Sportsbook and the wagers on the Patriots at Barstool Sportsbook and theScore Bet.
“Life happens and you move on,” said McIngvale, 70. “You know how long it took me to get over it? Two seconds each. A gambler has to be resilient if anything. They knock you down and you’ve got to get back up. A setback is just a setup for a comeback.
The bets on Alabama were a hedge against losses on furniture promotions. Spend $3,000 or more and get it all back if Alabama won. He used a similar pitch when he came to the public’s attention in 2018 betting on the hometown Houston Astros to win baseball’s World Series. He says the program has helped his store be relevant in an increasingly competitive world.
“The promotion was great because Alabama is such a strong brand,” Mack said. “Afterwards, we did a deal where we offered all customers who lost a $1,000 gift certificate. It was good for business. Brick-and-mortar retailers are under siege right now. Unless we do something to differentiate ourselves from the competition, the Amazons of the world are going to overwhelm us.”
But Mack was back at it in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs He fell in love with the Tennessee Titans wagering $700,000 at Caesars Sportsbook and $1 million on the team to win the Super Bowl at +850. Had the Titans become NFL champions, he would have won $14.4 million. Regrettably, the Bengals upset the Titans.
But all was not lost for Mack. He hedged his Titans bet with a $1 million bet at Caesars on Cincinnati to cover the +3.5 points.
“The rationale is a couple guys I know that are pretty good at football are saying this is going to be a close game. I think Tennessee is going to win, so the rationale is if they win by one, two or three, I can win that bet and win the other one,” Mack told the Las Vegas Review Journal. “The other rationale is if Cincinnati wins, it cuts my losses on the Super Bowl bet.”
