The largest payout in sports betting history occurred on Saturday when Texas furniture store owner Jim ‘Mattress Mack’ McIngvale won $75m, after betting $10m on the Houston Astros to win the World Series.
McIngvale could be seen ecstatically jumping for joy in his front-row seats at the Minute Maid Park as the game culminated in a 4-1 victory for the Astros. They beat the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 6 of the World Series, completing a six-month betting odyssey for McIngvale. He had first placed a $3m wager on the Astros to win the World Series back in May, at 10-1 odds on the Caesars sportsbook app.
Caesars Digital COO Ken Fuchs commented: “What can we say? We just wrote the biggest check in sports betting history to Mattress Mack,” in a company press release on Saturday night.
That $3m bet with Caesars was McIngvale’s single largest wager, but would not be his last as he added $7m more in bets on the Astros over the summer on various sportsbooks. With average payout odds of +750, on paper, the mattress magnate won $75m, but he will not receive this amount in full.
McIngvale mitigated the risks of his bets via promotions at his Gallery Furniture store, based on the winners of the US’ biggest sporting events – from the Super Bowl to the Final Four. He offered to refund any customer spending at least $3,000 in-store to double their money if the Astros won.
This means that a large portion of his $75m win will be redistributed to happy patrons of the furniture store, although McIngvale will still retain a healthy profit.
McIngvale is happy to be recirculating the winnings, saying: “Oh, it's definitely a win-win. These promotions just bring the brand to life and give us a ton of brand equity that we wouldn't have otherwise.
“The customers love it, so they're totally engaged and talk about it for years. Because it runs all season long, it probably ups the number of people following the Astros, too, because now they have a real vested interest in the team."
Other sportsbooks McIngvale used included Kindred’s Unibet, on which he bet $1m at odds of +500 in early November.
