Mattress Mack Set to Wager About $4M at Kentucky Derby

Horse owner and Houston furniture magnate Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale plans to be at Churchill Downs to bet up to about $4 million again on the Kentucky Derby favorite. The big betting is a hedge on his furniture giveaway for customers if the public's choice wins.

Ideally, favoritism will be locked in by an hour before the race, but "if both horses are three-and-a-half to one a minute before the race starts, then I've got to take a stand," McIngvale said in a telephone interview. "So if my bet happens to establish the favorite for the Kentucky Derby, then so be it."

Unlike last year when Essential Quality   was a 2-1 morning line favorite and ended up as an almost 3-1 post time favorite with McIngvale's money, which horse will be favorite this year may not be known until closer to post time. 

While many expected the morning line favorite would be Twinspires.com Louisiana Derby (G2) winner Epicenter , Churchill line maker Mike Battaglia made Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G1) winner Zandon  a 3-1 choice with Epicenter at 7-2.

McIngvale hasn't decided his bets yet, but he said he wants to avoid a favorite winning while he ends up betting the second choice and giving away furniture to certain customers who've spent at least $3,000.

"That would be a disaster," McIngvale said. "There is some intrigue or gamble in it. So I've got to be smart enough to pick the favorite."

McIngvale said he has people in Louisville researching for him and he'll have hours Saturday to bet a little at a time "Then place a big bet there at the end, so it should be doable." But, he said, it's possible—not probable—that he could split the bet among horses.

He said he wasn't "too surprised" by Zandon being the favorite because of perceptions that Zandon is "the hot horse" working out at Churchill.

McIngvale said he also may play exotics—including exactas—centered around the Derby favorite "To take some of the pressure off the win money, which obviously lowers the odds."

But even with lowering your odds, McIngvale said the leverage on the money in pari-mutuel betting with the Derby is better than in other sports where he's made similar promotional offers and wagers.

"On $8 or $10 million worth of liability, you might only have to bet $2 to $3 million to cover it," he said. 

In the NCAA men's basketball tournament, McIngvale said Kansas's win meant he gave away $14 million in furniture "and I still got my initial investment back, so everybody was thrilled… and it was a great promotion. So that's the type of thing I'm looking for in the Kentucky Derby is get the favorite home."

McIngvale also will have some money bet on Smile Happy , "My favorite horse in the race," as a son of the Claiborne Farm sire and champion sprinter Runhappy   who McIngvale campaigned.

"What I'd like to see is a dead heat between the favorite and Smile Happy," he said. "Any bets I do are sizable so it'll be pretty sizable. I bet with both hands. I can't help myself. My wife says I have a gambling problem. I say I have a promotional problem."

All of McIngvale's bets will be through the windows on the track to maximize the returns to Kentucky horsemen, he said, which includes family operating at the Thoroughbred Training Center.

Watching McIngvale and his wagering impact was a subject for the NBC Sports broadcast last year and will be again, said Steve Kornacki, whose main job is as the network's elections data analyst. Also, a longtime horse racing fan, Kornacki applied his "Big Board" data analysis to last year's wagering patterns.

"It was a real eye-opener to me last year when we did that math and we realized… as of about 6 p.m. last year, technically Rock Your World   would have been the favorite at the moment without the Mattress Mack money," Kornacki said in a conference call with reporters. "It was that big of a difference." (By post time, that no longer was the case, he said.)

Whether McIngvale this year is the deciding state in a 50-50 election remains to be seen.

"I'll work on coming up with the right election analogy between now and Saturday for it," Kornacki said.

If McIngvale goes with Zandon, Kornacki said, "I'm wondering if that's going to create some significant separation between Zandon and Epicenter, two horses I think if you look at both of them, you could make a case that Epicenter ought to be the favorite. You could certainly make a case that they've got a pretty equal chance of winning the Derby."

If true, bettors could see "some value around Epicenter that we didn't necessarily think there would be, say, a month ago," Kornacki said.

Churchill Downs longtime oddsmaker Mike Battaglia said McIngvale's wagering did not factor into making Zandon the morning-line favorite over Epicenter.

"I don't know who he's betting, so I couldn't have taken that into consideration," Battaglia said of McIngvale's wagering plans. "I still don't know."

Battaglia also said post position didn't matter and that he'd set the line before the draw. 

"It was tough to separate them," Battaglia said, adding that the last Derby that was this close of a call was 2007 when Curlin   was a 7-2 morning line favorite over eventual winner Street Sense   at 4-1. Street Sense ended up a 4.90-1 favorite with Curlin finishing third at 5-1.

Battaglia said he'd like to make Zandon and Epicenter co-favorites "But you can't do that in the Derby," adding "It could go either way."

Battaglia said the edge was Zandon's finish in the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes and the way the Chad Brown charge has trained. "I just think he's moving forward at the right time."