Jim McIngvale, perhaps better known as Mattress Mack, has developed quite a knack for placing huge bets on sporting events. And if you thought he’d be passing up Super Bowl betting, you’d be wrong.

McIngvale wagered $1 million on the San Francisco 49ers to win Super Bowl 54 at The Mirage in Las Vegas yesterday. Not surprisingly it’s one of the largest bets reported on The Big Game thus far, and with the Niners facing +120 moneyline odds at the time of the wager, McIngvale would receive a total payout of $1,200,000 in winnings with a San Francisco victory.

A look at the amount of money that McIngvale has lost on NFL betting this year would make even experienced bettors shudder. After all, he’ll be hoping the third time is the charm, as he wagers $1 million against Kansas City for the third consecutive game this NFL postseason.

But most famously at various points during the 2019 MLB season he placed a series of bets that eventually totaled around $11 million on the Houston Astros to win the World Series. The Washington Nationals, however, defeated Houston. McIngvale seemed to come away with nothing, at least on the surface.

McIngvale Turns Betting into Business Strategy

As it turns out, there’s a motive to Mattress Mack's madness. Not only has McIngvale built up his public profile considerably both on social and traditional media through his betting antics, he also has paired them with outlandish promotions through his well-known furniture chain.

McIngvale is a gambling aficionado, but he’s a highly successful businessman first. He owns and operates the Gallery Furniture retail chain, which he started with $5,000 and a pickup truck and built into a Houston staple with around $200 million in sales every year.

During that Astros World Series run, McIngvale promised to refund every customer who purchased a bed from Gallery Furniture over a specified period of time if Houston won its second world championship.

That would have saddled him with a loss of at least $20 million, but he would’ve hedged that with his Astros futures bet winnings.

This time McIngvale is running a Super Bowl promotion in which customers will receive a 50% refund or 100% refund in store credit on all Tempur-Pedic mattress purchases over $3,000 if the Niners win their sixth Lombardi Trophy.

Another MGM Bet Shifted Point Spread

But as big as Mattress Mack’s Super Bowl stake is, another bettor at MGM Resorts International actually forced a change to the point spread almost singlehandedly.

This wager totaled $550,000 on the Chiefs to cover the one-point spread, and the ticket would pay out $1.5 million if Pat Mahomes and Co. can get it done. That prompted MGM to shift the line up to Kansas City -1.5, where it remained online at BetMGM as of Thursday afternoon.

With two more six-figure bets on the Chiefs also locked in, MGM is still feeling good about its standing heading into Super Bowl Sunday. Mirage sportsbook director Jeff Stoneback told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that “we’d be a winner all the way around.”

"If the game kicked off today, we’d be in a good position with the money we’ve taken on the Chiefs and the money we took on the 49ers on the money line."

The latest Super Bowl odds listed the over/under at 54.5 and the Chiefs as -120 moneyline favorites three days before kickoff.