McDonald’s isn’t spending $140M for awareness.

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]A restaurant CEO asked me the other day, Peter, why is McDonald's investing $140 million to sponsor a brand new Chicago soccer stadium? Particularly, he said, when everybody is so aware of McDonald's. And my response was, McDonald's is not fighting for awareness. In fact, most restaurants don't have an awareness issue. They are generally known in their marketplaces. Rather, McDonald's is fighting for recall, which is a battle that it has been losing now for many years, and it is trying to climb its way back. So, let me explain. Chick-fil-A is one example, has been named the number one QSR brand in America for 11 years straight in customer satisfaction. Who do you think has been surging in customer recall as a result? McDonald's is at the near bottom of those surveys.

[00:00:49]Taco Bell is the leading QSR brand in late night, not McDonald's. If you want food that feels a little more real, you're going to Chipotle, not McDonald's. In fact, home cooking, convenience stores, and prepared foods from supermarkets are all showing up in recall at faster and faster rates as compared to McDonald's in those moments that count for McDonald's. McDonald's is in a recall fight, and it is doing everything it can to recover its positioning. And this soccer stadium sponsorship is just one part of that.

[00:01:23]Now, there is a financial analysis piece to this. If you assume, like we do, that McDonald's stadium will produce a billion views a year for the McDonald's brand through articles, through photos, through visits, through drive-bys, through games, through other types of events, then their cost per thousand impressions is about $10. Very competitive with other types of advertising. So, financially it makes sense. But moreover, by breaking their own patterns of how they reach the market, they're hoping to increase recall for their brand rather than fading into the patterns that everybody else is practicing. So, if you want to grow your revenue to higher and higher sustainable levels, you want to grow your four-wall NOI to higher and higher sustainable levels by optimizing recall as just one example, then check us out at dineroc.com.