DOLLAR DOLLAR BILLS
How you can capitalize on Mattress Mack's enormous bet on the big game
Feb 8, 2022, 4:24 pm
Mattress Mack bets big. Photo courtesy of Gallery Furniture
Mattress Mack
You know him, you love him, you’ve bought “two great recliners and one low price from him.” Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale is at it again, making an outrageously big bet on the Super Bowl.
Excuse me, legal disclaimer, I meant to say: “The Big Game played Sunday, February 13 at Inglewood, California between the team from Cincinnati and the team from Los Angeles.”
That’s the Super Bowl, right? Isn’t that stupid, that the Super Bowl practically has become a national holiday, it’s certainly and sadly more celebrated than Veterans Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day, yet the NFL will squash any business that holds a “Super Bowl sale” or promotion?” (Editor’s note: Shhh...Ken, are you trying to get us sued?)
This year, Mack has bet $4,534 million on the Cincinnati Bengals to defeat the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl played at SoFi Stadium. At the same time, customers who spend $3,000 or more on mattresses or reclining sectionals, reclining sofas, or home theater seating from Gallery Furniture “on I-45 between Tidwell and Parker,” will get all their money back if the Bengals win on Super Bowl Sunday.
There! I named names. Sue me, NFL.
Mack stands to win $7,707,800 if Joe Burrow and the Bengals cooperate and upset the Rams — minus the money Mack will have to refund his customers who took advantage of the promotion.
This is just the latest of Mack’s highly publicized “Monopoly money” bets. Since 2019, Mack has wagered – and mostly lost – millions and millions on his bets, most of them on the Astros and against the Kansas City Chiefs.
In 2020, he lost three straight playoff bets going against the Chiefs, including the playoff game where the Houston Texans historically blew a 24-0 lead and wound up losing 51-31.
He bet on the Houston Texans? In the playoffs? What is wrong with you, Mattress Mack?
While Mattress Mack has lost millions over the years on betting, including $13 million in one day in 2020, he shrugs it off. It helps that he still wins millions in free publicity, including visits to the Ellen show and the Today show and, and as he says, “goodwill with our customers.”
Explaining his gambling itch, Mack once told gambling sports writer Darren Rovell, “I like the action. I like the adrenaline and playing for high stakes. It makes you want to get up in the morning.”
(To be clear, when I said “gambling sports writer,” I meant that Rovell covers sports gambling. I don’t know his personal habits.)
Even stupider (rhymes with Jupiter) than betting on the Texans, Mack says he’s had to place his bets with casinos and sports books in Nevada, Mississippi, New Jersey, Colorado, and Louisiana because gambling is illegal in Texas.
That’s because our phony, fake moralist politicians in Austin think gambling is some sort of sin or something.
Meanwhile our neighboring states and dozens more (30 in all) allow gambling and are raking in tax money. Our legislators don’t dare put sports gambling on the ballot because gambling would win in a landslide. According to a poll in the Dallas Morning News, 57 percent of Texans want legalized gambling in the Lone Star State with only 29 percent opposed. The remaining percent either don’t care, have Caller ID on their phone, or hide behind the couch (like I do) when somebody holding a clipboard knocks on their door.
Mack says he drove across the border into Louisiana and pulled into a gas station to make his bets on this year’s Super Bowl. He’s a law-abiding citizen. Texans reportedly wager $2.5 billion a year in nearby Louisiana and Oklahoma casinos. That’s potential Texas tax money going elsewhere.
Of course, Texans have the option of creating online sports wagering accounts based in other countries (and some U.S. states). But those sports books require a credit card and more than 20 percent of U.S. adults do not have a credit card. That leaves non-credit card holding gamblers to use local bookies, who typically don’t pay taxes on their income.
The solution, of course, would be to legalize sports gambling in Texas, so poor Mattress Mack wouldn’t have to burn gas to drop millions on football and baseball games.
But, don’t feel too sorry for Mack’s gambling losses. He won the biggest wager of his life, the smartest bet they say anybody can make, which is betting on yourself. Mack arrived in Houston in 1981 with only $5,000 to his name. He opened a furniture store in a ramshackled, well, shack on I-45.
Now, Gallery Furniture reportedly does $200 million in business each year and Mack’s estimated personal fortune is $300,000,000.
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Soon after Lance McCullers Jr.’s family received online death threats following a tough start by the Houston Astros’ pitcher, his 5-year-old daughter, Ava, overheard wife Kara talking on the phone about it.
What followed was a painful conversation between McCullers and his little girl.
“She asked me when I came home: ‘Daddy like what is threats? Who wants to hurt us? Who wants to hurt me?’” McCullers told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “So, those conversations are tough to deal with.”
McCullers is one of two MLB pitchers whose families have received online death threats this month as internet abuse of players and their families is on the rise. Boston reliever Liam Hendriks took to social media soon after the incident with McCullers to call out people who were threatening his wife’s life and directing “vile” comments at him.
The Astros contacted MLB security and the Houston Police Department following the threats to McCullers. An police spokesperson said Thursday that it remains an ongoing investigation.
McCullers, who has two young daughters, took immediate action after the threats and reached out to the team to inquire about what could be done to protect his family. Astros owner Jim Crane stepped in and hired 24-hour security for them.
It was a move McCullers felt was necessary after what happened.
“You have to at that point,” he said.
Abuse increasing with rise in sports gambling
Players from around the league agree that online abuse has gotten progressively worse in recent years. Milwaukee’s Christian Yelich, a 13-year MLB veteran and the 2018 NL MVP, said receiving online abuse is “a nightly thing” for most players.
“I think over the last few years it’s definitely increased,” he said. “It’s increased to the point that you’re just: ‘All right, here we go.’ It doesn’t even really register on your radar anymore. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. You’re just so used to that on a day-to-day, night-to-night basis. It’s not just me. It’s everybody in here, based on performance.”
And many players believe it’s directly linked to the rise in legalized sports betting.
“You get a lot of DMs or stuff like that about you ruining someone’s bet or something ridiculous like that,” veteran Red Sox reliever Justin Wilson said. “I guess they should make better bets.”
Hendriks has had enough
Hendriks, a 36-year-old reliever who previously battled non-Hodgkin lymphoma, said on Instagram that he and his wife received death threats after a loss to the Mets. He added that people left comments saying that they wished he would have died from cancer among other abusive comments.
He later discussed the issue and his decision to speak out about it.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “Like at some point, everyone just like sucking up and dealing with it isn’t accomplishing anything. And we pass along to security. We pass along to whoever we need to, but nothing ends up happening. And it happens again the next night. And so, at some point, someone has to make a stand. And it’s one of those things where the more eyes we get on it, the more voices we get talking about it. Hopefully it can push it in the right direction."
What teams are doing
Both the Astros and the Red Sox are working with MLB security to take action against social media users who direct threats toward players and their families. Red Sox spokesperson Abby Murphy added that they’ve taken steps in recent years to make sure player' families are safe during games. That includes security staff and Boston police stationed in the family section at home and dedicated security in the traveling party to monitor the family section on the road.
Murphy said identifying those who make anonymous threats online is difficult, but: “both the Red Sox and MLB have cyber programs and analysts dedicated to identifying and removing these accounts.”
The Astros have uniformed police officers stationed in the family section, a practice that was implemented well before the threats to McCullers and his family.
Abandoning social media
For some players, online abuse has gotten so bad that they’ve abandoned social media. Detroit All-Star outfielder Riley Greene is one of them, saying he got off because he received so many messages from people blaming him for failed bets.
“I deleted it,” he said of Instagram. “I’m off it. It sucks, but it’s the world we live in, and we can’t do anything about it. People would DM me and say nasty things, tell me how bad of a player I am, and say nasty stuff that we don’t want to hear.”
Criticism is part of the game, threats are not
The 31-year-old McCullers, who returned this year after missing two full seasons with injuries, said dealing with this has been the worst thing that’s happened in his career. He understands the passion of fans and knows that being criticized for a poor performance is part of the game. But he believes there’s a “moral line” that fans shouldn’t cross.
“People should want us to succeed,” he said. “We want to succeed, but it shouldn’t come at a cost to our families, the kids in our life, having to feel like they’re not safe where they live or where they sit at games.”
Houston manager Joe Espada was livid when he learned about the threats to McCullers and his family and was visibly upset when he addressed what happened with reporters.
Espada added that the team has mental health professionals available to the players to talk about the toll such abuse takes on them and any other issues they may be dealing with.
“We are aware that when we step on the field, fans expect and we expect the best out of ourselves,” Espada said this week. “But when we are trying to do our best and things don’t go our way while we’re trying to give you everything we got and now you’re threatening our families and kids — now I do have a big issue with that, right? I just did not like it.”
Kansas City’s Salvador Perez, a 14-year MLB veteran, hasn’t experienced online abuse but was appalled by what happened to McCullers. If something like that happened to him he said it would change the way he interacts with fans.
“Now some fans, real fans, they’re gonna pay for that, too,” he said. "Because if I was him, I wouldn’t take a picture or sign anything for noboby because of that one day.”
McCullers wouldn’t go that far but admitted it has changed his mindset.
“It does make you kind of shell up a little bit,” he said. “It does make you kind of not want to go places. I guess that’s just probably the human reaction to it.”
Finding a solution
While most players have dealt with some level of online abuse in their careers, no one has a good idea of how to stop it.
“I’m thankful I’m not in a position where I have to find a solution to this,” Tigers’ pitcher Tyler Holton said. “But as a person who is involved in this, I wish this wasn’t a topic of conversation.”
White Sox outfielder Mike Tauchman is disheartened at how bad player abuse has gotten. While it’s mostly online, he added that he’s had teammates that have had racist and homophobic things yelled at them during games.
“Outside of just simply not having social media I really don’t see that getting better before it just continues to get worse,” he said. “I mean, I think it’s kind of the way things are now. Like, people just feel like they have the right to say whatever they want to whoever they want and it’s behind a keyboard and there’s really no repercussions, right?”