McDonald's Ends FIFA World Cup Sponsorship

An iconic partnership is coming to an end. 

After 32 years, McDonald’s is ending its partnership with the FIFA World Cup, with FIFA confirming that the fast food giant’s current agreement will expire at the end of 2026. 

This follows concerns from McDonald’s that the company’s campaign for the FIFA World Cup 2026 did not meet expectations, with Chief Financial Officer Ian Borden sharing that much of its Q2 performance can “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. 

Prior to the announcement, Ian said in a Q2 earnings call that the company was “taking actions in the near term,” to address underperformance. 

The FIFA World Cup at McDonald’s

McDonald’s began its partnership with the FIFA World Cup in 1994 as a global sponsor – the company’s first ever worldwide sporting event venture. 

Its campaign at the FIFA World Cup 2026 was its largest global effort ever – launching across more than 100 markets and featuring football icons such as 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 showed players as McDonald’s fans by eating their actual favourite orders. 

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

Over the course of the tournament, McDonald's had 13,915 visible advertisements on the international match feeds, ranking second behind Coca-Cola (21,893 ads). 

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

An overhaul of the McDonald’s marketing model

The company’s decision to end its FIFA World Cup partnership follows an overhaul to the McDonald’s marketing model. 

During an investor day presentation in September, the company announced that it had begun to pilot a media network across its US restaurants – with hopes to build this into a billion-dollar advertising business by selling third-party ad space on its drive-thru order boards, 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 U.S. alone by 2028,” Morgan Flatley, McDonald’s Executive Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer, said 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.”

Who are McDonald’s key 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: 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.