Mattress Mack: Promoting Winning is Sportsbooks’ Best Marketing Tool
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Rather than shoving sign up bonuses or referral codes in consumers’ faces, sportsbooks would be wise to promote their platforms as the best place for “winners," Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale said at a conference Wednesday.
His remarks came following a question from ESPN’s David Purdum about professional sports bettors. He suggested many likely resent Mattress Mack for the eagerness in which sportsbooks take his big bets, when they’re often limited in how much they can put down themselves.
Mack, a furniture salesman from Houston, Texas, became a betting icon in 2021 for a series of million dollar bets on the Houston Astros. That has only increased eyes on how sportsbooks deal with their customers.
If a player is winning too often, it’s completely within the legal right of the operator to limit how much they can bet, sometimes even down to pennies.
But as more and more have taken to social media to voice their frustrations with the practice, legal operators have drawn criticism for urging crackdown on offshore sportsbooks when they’re actively making it harder for some to bet.
If they exclude, it’s not helpful for the player or the operator in acquiring customers, Richard Schwartz, CEO of Rush Street Interactive, added at SBC’s North America Summit in Northern New Jersey. Rush Street Interactive operates the BetRivers and PlaySugarHouse brands.
Sportsbooks would do well to say: “This is where you win," Mack said.
Typically sportsbooks use free bets, credit or deposit matches as their main tool to get customers to sign up or get their friends and family too. But Mack suggested that prompts one time use, and leaves little incentive to continue betting on a particular app.
He encouraged more operators to figure out how to calculate a profitable strategy that doesn’t drive bettors offshore.
“Winners are the best advertisers,” he said.
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