March Madness Betting Big for Books and for Mattress Mack

One of the most exciting times of the year for sportsbooks and for bettors is March Madness. And one of the most interested sports bettors will be Mattress Mack, who is betting heavily on Houston to win the NCAA title. The American Gaming Association estimates that $2.72 billion will be wagered legally on this year’s NCAA Tournament. Cait DeBaun, vice president of strategic communications and responsibility at AGA said to the media that March Madness is “the largest betting event in the U.S. There are currently 38 states plus Washington D.C. that have some form of legal sports betting. That $2.72 billion dollar number is just over 2% of all legal sports bets placed last year. The number from the ACA for 2023 was just over $121 billion in bets placed legally on sports.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament began with First Four action on Tuesday, but the main tournament begins on Thursday with First Round action. The women’s tournament also begins this week. There will be a total of 136 teams that will play 134 games over the next few weeks.

Sportsbooks are ready for all of the action. The NCAA Tournament is actually much bigger than the Super Bowl because the tourney takes place over weeks and has multiple games, while the Super Bowl is just a single event. The huge betting numbers for the NCAA Tournament continue to increase because of the popularity of parlays and because in-game betting continues to expand. Another factor that will increase sportsbook revenue for March Madness is the increased wagering on women’s games. South Carolina is unbeaten in women’s hoops and has drawn betting interest and Iowa has Caitlyn Clark who has set scoring records this season. Also getting some attention is USC’s JuJu Watkins.

Since the beginning of last year’s NCAA Tournament, sports betting has expanded in many states, including North Carolina. The start for North Carolina has been strong, as data from location tracker GeoComply showed that there were 5.3 million geolocation checks in the state during the first 48 hours of live sports betting in the state. North Carolina is ninth in the United States in terms of population and it is full of college basketball fans who support teams like North Carolina and Duke. The Tar Heels are the No. 1 seed in the West Region of the NCAA Tournament.

While North Carolina is the top seed in the West, Houston is the top seed in the South Region. The Cougars are +550 to win the national title at Caesars. You may have heard of one of the school’s biggest fans, Jim McIngvale, better known as Mattress Mack. He has already reportedly bet $1 million on the Cougars to win the title. You might think that McIngvale is crazy to wager so much money on a futures bet on his local team, but he is not doing it out of sentiment. He owns the Gallery Furniture retail chain and he has made big wagers on teams before that garnered national headlines. He ties in a promotion to his wager so that he will win no matter what happens with his wager.

Mattress Mack will have Gallery Furniture run a promotion. In this case, the promotion states that customers who buy a mattress costing $4,000 or more will get it for free if Houston wins the NCAA Tournament. McIngvale will then place a big bet on Houston to cover his possible losses. He wagered $1 million on Houston and got them at +750. If the Cougars win the national title he would be paid a cool $7.5 million dollars. If Houston ends up winning the title, then Gallery Furniture would be able to cover a total of 1,875 mattress purchases of $4,000 each. If the Cougars don’t win the title, he would lose his million dollars but he would have sold a lot of high-prices mattresses.

This is not the first time that Mattress Mack has placed a big wager on a team. He reportedly won $72.6 million from betting on the Houston Astros to win the World Series in 2022. He has also lost big money, as he reportedly lost $4.1 million on Houston to win last year’s NCAA tournament.

Check out the latest sports betting odds at Caesars.