McDonald’s Shifts From Borrowed Attention to Owned Engagement

McDonald’s decision to end its FIFA sponsorship reflects a broader U.S. marketing reset. The company is placing greater value on loyalty, customer data and programs that can produce measurable restaurant visits.

McDonald’s will end its FIFA World Cup sponsorship after the 2026 tournament, concluding a relationship that began in 1994. The decision follows its largest global marketing campaign to date, which reached more than 100 markets but did not produce the expected business results.

Marketing strategy shift

The bigger story for U.S. multi-location brands is not the loss of a global sports property. It is McDonald’s acknowledgement that broad cultural visibility must do more to produce identifiable customers, repeat visits and measurable restaurant activity.

Global CMO Morgan Flatley said the company had become overly dependent on “borrowed IP”—the sports, entertainment franchises and celebrities that give brands access to established audiences. McDonald’s plans to use those partnerships more selectively while investing more heavily in brand assets and customer relationships it controls.

Large sponsorships can generate attention that would be difficult for a brand to create independently. But they are expensive, temporary and often difficult to connect with individual purchases.

McDonald’s U.S. comparable sales increased only 0.8% during the quarter that included the opening phase of its World Cup campaign. That result does not prove the sponsorship failed, but it illustrates the difficulty of converting mass-market visibility into incremental restaurant traffic.

For a U.S. chain with thousands of locations, national awareness is only one measure of performance. Marketing must also help determine which markets gained visits, whether an offer produced profitable transactions and whether first-time customers returned. Those questions become more important when franchisees fund portions of the marketing program and absorb the operating costs associated with promotions.

Loyalty program growth

McDonald’s is building a more direct engagement model through its loyalty program. The company plans to introduce tiers that reward participation and encourage less frequent customers to return.

Loyalty members already account for approximately 30% of McDonald’s sales and visit 2.5 times as often as other customers. The chain has also identified roughly 150 million infrequent members who could be reactivated through personalized challenges, early product access, faster points accumulation and other benefits.

Unlike a broad sponsorship, a loyalty interaction can be connected with a customer account and transaction. McDonald’s can measure whether an offer changed visit frequency, which products generated a response and whether the customer returned to the same restaurant or another location.

That information can also make national marketing more useful locally. Offers can reflect regional demand, customer behavior or restaurant capacity without abandoning a consistent brand message.

Franchisee support

The shift is particularly relevant to franchised businesses. Corporate marketing can generate interest, but franchisees deliver the food, staffing, speed and service that shape the customer’s experience. Owned programs give operators clearer evidence of how marketing affects their restaurants. Redemption, repeat visits and average transaction value can be evaluated by market or location instead of relying primarily on campaign reach and national sales.

McDonald’s has separately outlined an $8.5 billion plan to support franchisees through 2036 as it invests in restaurant operations, automation and hospitality. Those improvements support its marketing strategy. Personalized offers will not strengthen loyalty if long waits, order errors or inconsistent service weaken the resulting visit.

The company must also ensure that loyalty promotions work economically for operators. A program that increases traffic through aggressive discounts can raise sales while compressing restaurant-level margins.

McDonald’s is not leaving sports or entertainment. It continues to operate properties such as the McDonald’s All-American Games and has secured naming rights for the Chicago Fire’s future stadium.

These programs provide a different relationship with customers than a periodic global sponsorship. The Chicago stadium, for example, can support recurring events, regional offers and participation by nearby restaurants. An owned property can remain active throughout the year and provide more opportunities to connect engagement with loyalty and transactions.

External partnerships will still have a role when they deliver audiences McDonald’s cannot reach as efficiently on its own. The company’s reset suggests those investments will face a higher standard: cultural attention should lead customers into measurable relationships that McDonald’s and its franchisees can continue.

For other MULO brands, the takeaway is not to abandon sponsorships. It is to evaluate what happens after the impression … whether attention produces known customers, restaurant visits, repeat purchases and lasting value at the location level.

George Wolf is a senior writer at Street Fight. who has a passion for technology as it relates to local merchants and national brands. He is particularly interested in the constant evolution of the privacy landscape.