I learned of guy called "Mattress Mack" last week when we had a story about him buying 110 tickets to the World Series for vets in the Houston area. His real name is Jim McIngvale and he owns a chain of mattress stores in Houston.
He ran a promotion called "Win It All" in which he would refund your money if you bought a mattress that cost over $3000 if the Astros won the world series. As it became apparent that the Astros were actually going to make the series ol Mattress Mack started getting nervous. Because he had about $20,000,000 in exposure he said and no insurance against the bet.
When the Astros last won the World Series in 2017 he said that cost him around $13,000,000!
So he started trying to cover some of his losses by betting on the Astros to win games. He estimates that he made $13 million in bets which would have generated enough profit enough to cover the estimated $20 million to $25 million he would have had to pay back to customers had the Astros taken the series from the Washington Nationals. He won 3 of the 7 games he bet on which helps cover the losses of the 4 he lost. But as the Houston Chronicle reports "Mack says he pretty broke even on the promotion but the promotion will generate millions of sales over the next few months".
“I wish the Astros had won, because all the happy customers would tell their friends for the next 20 years about the mattress they got,