McDonald’s CFO Signals Shift Away From World Cup Sponsorship

McDonald’s is preparing to close a major chapter in its global marketing and sponsorship strategy. 

FIFA has confirmed that the fast-food company’s existing agreement will expire at the end of 2026, ending a relationship that began in 1994.

The decision follows concerns from McDonald’s that its campaign around the FIFA World Cup 2026 did not deliver the returns it anticipated. 

CFO Ian Borden said much of the company’s Q2 performance could “largely be attributed” to the campaign.

“While the campaign provided a lift to the business and generated excellent system excitement, the campaign underperformed versus our expectations,” Ian explained.

Before the announcement, Ian said during a Q2 earnings call that McDonald’s was “taking actions in the near term” to address the underperformance.

A costly global campaign

McDonald’s first became a global sponsor of the FIFA World Cup in 1994, in what was its first worldwide sporting-event venture.

Its 2026 activation was the company’s largest global effort ever. It launched in more than 100 markets and featured football figures including Christian Pulisic, David Beckham, Ronaldinho Gaúcho, Thierry Henry, Son Heung-Min, Lamine Yamal, Alphonso Davies and Santiago Giménez.

Created with Wieden+Kennedy and directed by Stacy Wall, the campaign films portrayed players as McDonald’s customers eating their real favourite orders.

The activity covered TV, social, digital, streaming and experiential marketing, and was anchored by collectable FIFA cups inspired by McDonald’s ‘Dream Team’ cups from the 1990s.

During the tournament, McDonald’s secured 13,915 visible advertisements on international match feeds, placing it second behind Coca-Cola, which recorded 21,893 adverts.

The company also captured roughly 29% of early FIFA World Cup 2026 ad viewership, according to Meltwater data.

The activity covered TV, social, digital, streaming and experiential marketing, and was anchored by collectable FIFA cups inspired by McDonald’s ‘Dream Team’ cups from the 1990s.

During the tournament, McDonald’s secured 13,915 visible advertisements on international match feeds, placing it second behind Coca-Cola, which recorded 21,893 adverts.

The company also captured roughly 29% of early FIFA World Cup 2026 ad viewership, according to Meltwater data.

Finance-led marketing rethink

The end of the World Cup partnership comes as McDonald’s restructures its marketing model. 

At a September investor day, the company said it had begun piloting a media network across US restaurants, with the ambition of building a billion-dollar advertising business by selling third-party ad space on drive-thru order boards, its app and self-order kiosks.

“Commerce media is one of the fastest-growing areas in advertising and is expected to reach more than US$100bn in the US alone by 2028,” said Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s Executive Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer, during the investor day presentation.

“It’s an opportunity to generate revenue for the system with little in the way of additional cost, no operational complexity and no disruption to our customer experience.”

McDonald’s technology partners

Google Cloud: Google Cloud and McDonald’s have a multi-year global partnership to power the company’s mobile apps, loyalty programmes, self-service kiosks and more.

Capgemini: Capgemini provides engineering, deployment and support services for customer-and-crew-facing digital channels.

Accenture: Accenture partnered with McDonald’s to support the adoption of edge technology and optimise restaurant operations.

Cognizant: Cognizant has a strategic partnership with McDonald’s to transform global enterprise systems.