Associated Press
- The owner of Gallery Furniture placed the biggest Super Bowl bet of 2021, winning over $6 million.
- The Texas businessman flew out to Colorado Springs to place the wager through DraftKings.
- Jim McIngvale plans to use the money to offset costs for a free mattress promotional.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
A Texas businessman, known by customers as “Mattress Mack,” placed the biggest bet on the Super Bowl this year, according to the sports-betting news site ActionNetwork – and he won millions.
The mattress retailer, Jim McIngvale, flew out to Colorado Springs last week to place a $3.46 million bet on his smartphone through DraftKings. The bet set McIngvale up for a total payout of about $6.18 million, according to DraftKings.
While online sports betting is not allowed in Texas, McIngvale contacted DraftKings to set up the bet and was flown to Colorado soon after.
“It happened very fast,” McIngvale told Insider. “Very few places have the capacity to take a bet that big.”
McIngvale bet on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With a +3.5 spread, the wager was that the team would either win or not lose by any more than three points.
Buccaneer quarterback Tom Brady then led the team to a 31-9 victory, taking home his seventh Super Bowl ring, despite being ranked as the underdog going into the game.
"It was a big win for me and my business," McIngvale told Insider. "It will allow us to give back to our customers."
The furniture retailer based out of Houston made the bet to help put together a promotion for his chain, Gallery Furniture. The bet offers customers the opportunity to win a free mattress if Brady's team won.
The Buccaneers were the underdogs going into the game, with DraftKings rating them as a three point underdog, but McIngvale is no stranger to sports betting. In 2019 he wagered $13 million that the Astros would beat the Nationals in the World Series in an effort to provide a similar promotional to his customers.
"Tampa Bay is loaded with talent on both sides of the ball and led by the greatest football player of all time in Tom Brady, so I'm betting big on the Bucs who have overcome tough matchups throughout the postseason," McIngvale said in a statement to DraftKings about the bet prior to the game.
McIngvale's bet is nearly one of the biggest Super Bowl bets of all time, according to Action Network. In 2010, Billy Walters bet $3.5 million on the game.
The multi-million dollar bet by "Mattress Mack" went viral after the Buccaneer's Super Bowl win Sunday night, as people congratulated the 69-year-old business owner.
—br_betting (@br_betting) February 8, 2021
DraftKings is one of the top betting platforms, especially as the pandemic has made online betting more popular and state's have continued to lift restrictions on online betting platforms.
The American Gambling Association expected $4.3 billion to be wagered on the game this year with a record 7.6 million people betting online - a 63% increase from 2020.
