Famous fan of the Houston Astros and millionaire owner of a popular Houston area furniture store, Mattress Mack, lost $7.9 million after placing massive bets on the 2023 MLB World Series. As the Astros’ in-state rival Texas Rangers knocked Houston out of World Series contention over the weekend, Mattress Mack saw his hopes of a multi-million dollar victory dashed in an instant.
Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale has risen to fame by using his love for the Astros along with his business marketing prowess to put together these massive futures bets on his hometown team. These particular bets are part of a promotion that McIngvale uses to drive sales during the fall months as the baseball season winds down.
CBS Sports estimated that a World Series victory by the Houston Astros would have won Mack an estimated $43.4 million. With the team being a perennial World Series contender, it isn’t hard to imagine that this bet may be a wise one, even without talking about the business aspect that drives the wager.
Mattress Mack has used these massive World Series bets frequently over recent years, as the Astros have been on a great run of form in the last decade, allowing him to place these wagers with a reasonable expectation that the team can win. When a customer comes into one of his stores to make a purchase, some of the profit from their purchase goes toward a new Mattress Mack World Series bet.
If the bet hits, this money then goes back to the customer in the way of free articles of furniture or whatever else they may have wanted from the furniture store giant. For those, like Mattress Mack, who are disappointed to see the team fail to reach the World Series this season, they can still hold hope in the team’s chances to make another run next year.
The Astros’ star third-baseman Alex Bregman tipped his cap to the opposing Rangers team and looked forward to the 2024 season, saying, “Definitely not what you want. When you set out in Spring Training, you set out to go win a championship. Unfortunately, we didn’t. You tip your hat to them. They played a heck of a series and they’ve got a heck of a ballclub over there.”
Manager Dusty Baker, now at the end of his career, reflected on the team’s strong run in recent years, saying, “It’s not easy to accept or say, but we got beat. We have been spoiled around here as far as winning and winning and winning. And heck, I’ve been here four years, and we’ve been to two World Series and [four] Championship Series. We have nothing to be ashamed of or nothing to hold our head down about. We’re down, but we’re not out. And every team in baseball would trade to have had the last four years that we’ve had.”
Forbes shared footage after last year’s World Series win by the Astros, when Mattress Mack won a whopping $75 million.
The featured image is a screenshot from an embedded YouTube Video.
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