Fine Dining - McDonald's Monopoly: History, Scandal, and Astronomically Bad Odds

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

🎩🍟💰 McDonald’s Monopoly: History, Scandal, and Astronomically Bad Odds💰🍟🎩 This week, we peel back the golden arches on one of the biggest promotions in fast-food history: McDonald’s Monopoly. From the McMillions scandal that rocked the 2000s to the shocking odds that make the Powerball look generous, this episode dives deep into the strange world where fries meet finance. We explore the sweepstakes mechanics, the global variations, and the jaw-dropping aftermath of McDonald’s paying out on a possibly fraudulent million-dollar game piece sent to St. Jude’s. 🎲 The Wild Origins of McDonald’s Monopoly 🕵️‍♂️ The McMillions Scandal That Changed Everything 📉 Why the $10,000 Lowe’s Prize Is 9x Harder to Win Than Powerball 🏦 How McDonald’s and Hasbro Both Profit from the Partnership 🇨🇦 The Game’s Unique Twists in Canada and the UK 📜 Sweepstakes vs. Lottery: What the Law Actually Says 💸 McDonald’s Randomly Paying Diners After the Scandal 🍟 The Most Unrealistic Odds You’ve Ever Heard 💬 COMMENT BELOW: Have you ever won anything more than food from McDonald’s Monopoly? 📢 SUPPORT THE SHOW & JOIN THE COMMUNITY: 🎉 Patreon (Bonus episodes, full Yelp segments & more): patreon.com/finediningpodcast 💬 Discord (Food talk, memes, cursed Yelp): discord.gg/6a2YqrtWV4 🎥 Watch full episodes: youtube.com/@finediningpodcast 🔗 All links: linktree.com/finediningpodcast Patreon Producers: Sue Ornelas & Joyce Van Patreon Subscribers: David Ornelas, Kellie Baldwin, Jeremy Horwitz, Herbert Amaya, Simone Davalos, Scott Bennett, Amy Reinhart, Josef Castaneda-Liles, & Travis Langley Free Patreon Followers: Joe Warszalek, Lauren Cummings, Grace Krainak, Keri Estes, Robert Duran, Patrick Elliott, Michelle Elmer, Dave Plummer, Nicholas Volney, Michael Gerard, Tracy Molino, Phuong Duong, Tyler Robinson, Brandon Gully, Mason Cruz, Michael Milito, Mez, & Aaron Hubbard 👉 NEXT WEEK: I cover chi SPACCA, the Italian butcher by Nancy Silverton — and quite possibly the best meal of my life.

Monopoly at McDonald's is back. When a thin piece of plastic on your Big Mac packaging can offer you the chance to win big, your adrenaline is going to shoot into overdrive. But what's the story behind this partnership between a fast food titan and a board game juggernaut? In an effort to gamify your McNuggets, this collaboration dates back almost 40 years and took America by storm when it all began. But it wasn't all on the up and up. A massive scandal dashed the legitimacy of this game,

and after years of cheating, the FBI brought down a ring of bad actors in one of the biggest inside jobs in corporate history. Now, it's 2025, and McDonald's has brought back its monopoly game pieces. Am I ready to trust again? My heart's been broken before, and I'm delicate. This week on the podcast, I'm going to take a look at the craze surrounding McDonald's monopoly and tell you the story of this

promotion that's been a fast food tradition since 1987. And then at the end of the episode, I'm going to peel a couple of monopoly pieces myself and see if I'm a big winner. Stay tuned. This is the Fine Dining Podcast. Your table is ready. Take your seat. The flavor of the day is mediocrity.

Wouldn't you like to try a bite? Guarantee it'll be. be the perfect five fine dining better than you thought worse than you hope fine dining we don't treat mediocre as a joke breaking every single place we've been compared to the perfect five out of ten hello and welcome to the fine dining podcast the show that covers all your favorite restaurant chains i am your host michael ornellis and this week on the show, I'm doing it alone to talk all things McDonald's Monopoly. I remember being a tyrant when I was a child demanding my entire family, let me do all

the monopoly piece peeling off of our sausage McMuffins. I was also that kid that insisted on being the one to press the elevator button, so I may have suffered from main character syndrome. But McDonald's was my life, from camping out for teeny beanie babies to getting suspicious rashes when my prepubescent love handles would make contact with the slide in the playplace, I was all about McDonald's. So when you give an obsessive kid a printed out Monopoly game board showing him all the pieces he could collect, you're tapping into some addictive psychology. So without further ado, let's look at the history of this cross-promotion, its most notorious

scandal, and the gambling risks of chasing the rare pieces like short line railroad and boardwalk. Before I jump in, if you struggle with gambling, I urge you to use the resources available to you and chat with the National Problem Gambling Helpline. That's 1-800-5-22-4700, which is operated by the National Council of Problem Gaming. The helpline serves as a one-stop hub connecting people looking for assistance with a gambling problem to local resources. This network includes contact centers that cover all 50 states and the U.S. territories. The National Problem Gambling Helpline offers call, text, and chat services 24-7-365. Anyways, let's look at the history and jump into this week's Eat Deeps.

Eatery Details. McDonald's launched its first Monopoly promotion in 1987, partnering with Monopoly's owner, Parker Brothers, Hasbro. turn a simple fast food purchase into a game of chance. Customers would receive peel off game pieces with certain menu items, each corresponding to Monopoly board properties. The idea was to collect a full set or find instant win tokens to win prizes from free food to cash.

This innovative sweepstakes quickly caught on, making buying a Big Mac feel like a world of possibility. What began in the U.S. soon became a worldwide phenomenon. Over the years, McDonald's monopoly has been run in at least 23 countries, including Canada, the U.K., Australia, Germany, France, Hong Kong, and Brazil. Each country has its localized version. The U.K. uses pounds and local property names. Canada even swapped in Canadian landmarks for monopoly properties in one edition.

By the mid-2010s, it was a regular annual promotion in many markets, eagerly anticipated by millions of customers each cycle. The McDonald's Monopoly promotion uses a classic collect-to-win mechanic. Each qualifying menu item comes with game piece stickers. Some pieces have instant prizes. Others are part of property sets. Complete a rare property set to win a grand prize. McDonald's famously advertises about a one-and-four odds of winning something.

Indeed, roughly one-and-four game pieces is a winner, usually a free burger or fries. However, landing a major prize is extremely unlikely. For example, the rare shortline railroad piece needed for a big prize had about one in 150 million odds of appearing in one promotion. In other words, millions of people might collect Park Place hoping for boardwalk in vain. The odds are astronomically against finding that jackpot piece. Here's a breakdown of which McDonald's Monopoly Prizes you can win and the odds of winning each one. One. Food prize, one in five. You can win a free burger, nuggets, breakfast sandwich, hash brown, whatever, pretty easily. A My McDonald's Rewards Points Prize is approximately one in 107. Already a big jump. The brown set of Mediterranean Avenue and the rare Baltic Avenue can reward an Audio Technica turntable bundle with approximate odds being one in 59.3 million. So, already crazy.

The green properties of Pacific Avenue, North Carolina Avenue, and the super rare Pennsylvania Avenue reward a $10,000 Lowe's shopping spree. The estimated chance of winning, one in $2.6 billion. For a trip for four to the Kennedy Space Center, you can collect the red set of Kentucky Avenue, Indiana Avenue, and the ultra-rare Illinois Avenue. You have an estimated one in three point one billion chance. The orange color set of St. James Place, Tennessee Avenue, and the rarest one, New York Avenue, awards a trip to four to Universal Orlando. The approximate odds of victory are won in $4.4 billion.

Just for a trip to go to Universal. Like, if you're chasing that, just buy yourself a trip to Universal. The light blue properties of Oriental Avenue, Vermont Avenue, and the almost impossible to find Connecticut Avenue, gives you a shot at a Polaris motorcycle or similar vehicle. Odds are estimated to be one in 11.1 billion. The Yellow Pieces, Atlantic Avenue, Ventnor Avenue, and the ultra rare Marvin Gardens can award a 2026 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited. The odds are estimated at one in 13.1 billion. This is insanity.

The pink game pieces, St. Charles Place, States Ave, and the Rare One Virginia Avenue have a prize of one million American Airlines miles. The odds are estimated at 1 in 13.2 billion. You have an estimated 1 in 60 billion chance of winning a trip for four to a Monopoly go location by collecting Redding Railroad, Pennsylvania Railroad, B&O Railroad, and the rare short line railroad. And now for an easy one, at an approximate 153 million chance, you can collect the utilities electric company and the much rarer waterworks for a 77-inch Samson.

sung OLED TV from Best Buy. You could also instantly win a million dollars in cash, which is $50,000 paid out over 20 years, but the odds of that are unknown. My guess is your chances are low. Now, for comparison, the odds of winning the grand prize in the Powerball are 1 in 292 million, which means a $10,000 low shopping spree is nine times harder to win in this game than the current $224 million jackpot from the actual lottery. And to put the rarity into context, you would have to buy 100 orders of McNuggets 26 million times to actually peel as many monopoly prizes as it would take to equal the winning odds just for that prize.

And that's not even the rarest one. At $4.39 per 10-piece McNugget, once you're over 2,000 orders of McNuggets, you may as well have just spent 10 grand at Lowe's. Unless you're going to eat all those. Toss your boy some nugs. Hey, give me some nuggets. I want some McNuggets. You don't, you have so many. Don't be so f***!

Other headline prizes in years past have included new cars, luxury vacations, home makeovers, shopping sprees, and even free gasoline for a year. In 2014, for instance, McDonald's added a special free parking, $100,000 cash prize and offered trips to the Super Bowl, a year of free shell fuel, $5,000 target shopping experiences, and more. There are also tons of smaller prizes, everything from gaming consoles and gift cards to, of course, millions of instant-win McDonald's menu items, free McMuffins, fries, et cetera. This tiered prize structure, lots of small wins, a few huge wins, creates excitement while keeping big payouts scarce. Over the years, the Monopoly promotion has been hyped with the help of celebrities and pop culture crossovers.

McDonald's has enlisted star athletes in particular, the 2014-14, campaign featured LeBron James, NHL star Patrick Kane, soccer champion Alex Morgan, and NASCAR driver Jamie McMurray in its commercials, and even gave away one-on-one meet-and-grit experiences with those athletes as prized experiential rewards. The promotion even seeped into pop culture with an HBO documentary series McMillions, with the S-styled as a dollar sign, examining its scandal and a planned Hollywood film. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon have been linked to a movie project about the monopoly scam. The promotion's biggest controversy came when it was revealed that for years,

no legitimate player stood a chance at the top prizes. In 2001, the FBI announced that Jerome Uncle Jerry Jacobson, head of security at McDonald's marketing agency, had orchestrated a massive fraud scheme. Starting around 1995, he secretly stole the most valuable game pieces, like the million-dollar boardwalk winners, before they were attached to packaging. And he distributed them to an underground network of accomplices.

Those associates won virtually all the high-tiered prizes between 1995 and 2000, cash, cars, vacations, reaping an estimated $24 million in illicit winnings. It was essentially an inside job that rigged McDonald's monopoly for half a decade. The FBI's undercover investigation dubbed Operation Final Answer, a nod to who wants to be a millionaire, culminated in summer of 2001 with multiple arrests. In total, 51 people were indicted in the scheme, and Jacobson ultimately pled guilty and served prison time.

The scandal was a huge embarrassment for McDonald's. The game had been compromised at the highest level without McDonald's knowing. And due to the timing, this case kind of fell away from the public eye once September 11th happened in 2001. McDonald's reacted swiftly when the fraud came to light in 2001. The company immediately halted the monopoly promotion that year and cut ties with Simon Marketing, the marketing firm responsible for running it.

McDonald's also went into damage control mode with an unprecedented giveaway. It randomly awarded $10 million in cash to customers to prove that real people could win. They handed out 55 cash prizes to unsuspecting diners as an apology of sorts. which, by the way, I hope they announced ahead of time that we will be randomly giving out money because attendance does go up at McDonald's during the Monopoly season, and I think it would be, look, it would be real of them to award the people that don't need that kind of promotion that just do the work day in, day out, pounding Big Macs, and reward them. Those are the people that deserve it, but I don't know.

I never go to McDonald's, but I would if I heard they were handing out random cash. McDonald's repentance went so far as to even honor a dubious million-dollar game piece that had been anonymously mailed to St. Jude's Children's Hospital during the scam, continuing to pay out that prize to the charity. After lawsuits flew back and forth, McDonald's and its supplier settled matters legally. Importantly, the company overhauled how the game was run, new secure procedures, and independent oversight were put. in place to prevent a repeat. By 2003, McDonald's Monopoly was reintroduced, branded that year

as the best chance game, with much tighter security and regained customer trust. The drama remarkably did not kill the promotion. Monopoly at McDonald's lived on, now more closely policed to keep it fair. There have been concerns about the gambling-like nature of the McDonald's Monopoly game. In 2025, British charity Gamble Aware warned that games like McDonald's Monopoly might normalize gambling for young people since they mimic lotteries and raffles with random prizes. Notably, McDonald's Monopoly is technically a sweepstakes and free to play. No purchase is necessary by law, which is how it avoids legal classification as gambling. McDonald's responded to those criticisms by emphasizing that no extra cost is required to play.

Game pieces come with food. you're already buying, and that the promotion is marketed only to adults, not children. While regulators haven't taken action, these debates pop up periodically, showing the fine line McDonald's walks between a fun game and the risk of overzealous participation. Notably, in announcing the 2025 return of the game, McDonald's used the phrase, the thrill of the peel, which in my book would indicate they're very savvy to the physiological endorphin rush that comes with this endeavor. And I'd argue it's very similar to what one might experience with actual gambling. And I know when I was a kid, I loved it. I know it wasn't marketed to kids,

but it is very fun. It is a game. And when you're peeling these little satisfying pieces of plastic, it does appeal to kids, regardless of what you say. I know a kid can't claim it, but they're involved. I bet you there are plenty of parents who, go to McDonald's to get monopoly pieces because their kids are obsessed, even if the parent would be the winner from a legal standpoint. There's a reason the company keeps bringing monopoly back it reliably boosts the bottom line. McDonald's executives have hailed it as one of the most effective promotions they've ever run. During monopoly periods, sales typically jump by roughly 5% or more as customers flock to collect pieces. For example, McDonald's credited its monopoly game

for lifting one quarter's full profits by about 5%, an increase of tens of millions of dollars when the promo was in full swing. The game drives customers to order larger sizes to get extra game pieces and make repeat visits in hopes of winning. A big win for McDonald's revenue. It also boosts engagement with McDonald's apps and loyalty programs in recent iterations,

creating a halo effect that keeps customers plugged into the brand ecosystem even after the contest. In short, Monopoly has proven to be a marketing goldmine. It turns the act of buying fries into a thrill of the chase experience that gets more people buying more McDonald's. And the partnership has been mutually beneficial. Hasbro, which owns Monopoly, earns licensing fees from McDonald's and gets a huge global publicity boost for its classic board game. With Monopoly approaching its 90th anniversary, Hasbro loves keeping the brand culturally. relevant, and what better way than having millions of McDonald's customers obsessing over

Monopoly properties each year. The Monopoly brand is a global phenomenon, claiming over one billion players in 114 countries over its lifetime. The McDonald's promotion reinforces Monopoly's household name status and often cross-promotes Hasbro's own products. In some years, McDonald's has given away Hasbro toys or games as prizes. And the 2025 U.S. game even tied in with Hasbro's new Monopoly mobile app, offering a $50,000 vacation to a destination featured in the Monopoly Go smartphone game.

Such tie-ins drive players to Hasbro's digital games and keeps the Monopoly brand in the spotlight. In essence, Hasbro gets both royalties and marketing. McDonald's pays to use the Monopoly trademarks, and in return, Monopoly stays popular across generations. After a hiatus of nearly a decade in the U.S., McDonald's brought Monopoly back in 2025, this time with modern digital enhancements. The 2025 game launched on October 6, 2025, and runs through November 2nd in U.S. restaurants. Customers could collect game pieces not just on packaging, but also via the McDonald's app for the first time.

In total, over 30 menu items were eligible for game pieces across breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Classic items like the Big Mac, Filet of Fish, Egg McMuffin, chicken McNuggets, 10 or 20-piece, large fries, hash browns, and large soft drinks and iced coffees come with physical peel-off stickers on the packaging. Meanwhile, some newer or premium items gave digital-only game pieces, no sticker, when ordered through the app. For example, the quarter-pounder with cheese, Mick Krispy Chicken Sandwiches, McGrittles' Breakfast Sandwiches, Biscuit Sandwiches, 4-piece Mitt Krispy Tenders,

Medium fries and certain Mick Cafe beverages would drop digital game pieces into your app account. Every game piece, whether peeled off a cup or awarded in app, could be scanned or revealed in the McDonald's app to see if you won something. And each piece also gave a shot at a special bonus play digital mini game for extra chances. And while the promotion is still ongoing, it's expected to make a return in the future as it's already been a success. And I will personally say, I'm not really a fan of it needing to be tied to the app. Maybe I'm wrong about this. I have no actual footing to stand on, but I do feel different with something tactile telling me I won versus something I scanned telling me I won. It feels

arbitrary that the app could decide I'm a winner or loser, whereas if I get a physical piece, I have a piece that told me that was handed to me that says that I'm the winner. winner. Maybe I'm just paranoid and I think the world is out to get me. I don't know. But it does feel better to pull something off of a fry box than to pull a code off of a fry box and then go to an app and scan it and find out if that's a winner, which I will do now because that will do it for this week's Eat Deats. I have a Big Mac box and a large fry box. And I have two chances to win here. And honestly, I did just say that you have to peel and go in the app.

I haven't peeled these yet. So I genuinely don't know. There might actually be game pieces on here, and I misunderstood it. But let's find out. Atlantic Avenue. I don't know if that was the rare one. I don't think it is. All right.

My fries had Atlantic Avenue. And my Big Mac has, you have one food. Scan slash enter code in the McDonald's app by 1123 to reveal food item. All right, I won free food from this, and I got Atlantic Avenue. All right, Atlantic Avenue is the one that would go for the 2026 Jeep Grand Cherokee, but I did get free food, so I guess there's that. I'll find out what when I scan it into the app. And that's the episode.

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I do one at the end of every month, as well as extended Yelp from Strangers segments. And yeah, that's another one in the books. I will be back next week covering my 10 out of 10, the best restaurant I've ever been to. I'm going to be ending the season, season three, with the best restaurant I've ever been to for one episode and the worst restaurant I've ever been to for one episode. And we're just going to talk about them. I'll tell you why I picked them for that. And that'll be the end of season three.

Then I'm going to be doing a bridge season, which I'm called. calling 3.5, that'll take us through the end of the year. I am going to take the weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's off. But other than that, we're just going to be filling in some gaps from the show. For instance, the eat deets about Outback Steakhouse, because that was the first episode of the podcast years and years ago, and that was before there was a history segment. So I would love to cover the story of Outback Steakhouse. And joining me for that will be friend of the podcast, Vivien Wen, who was with me at Chili's, at Who, It's Wings at Sizzler.

She's been on several episodes, and I'll kind of be covering places that I haven't done the history on, but I have reviewed. So those first four episodes of the podcast, and then I'll be doing Yelp from Strangers for some of the restaurants in the first 20 episodes of the podcast, because that segment didn't exist until episode 21. So I'm going to have a lot of fun with that. I hope you're along for the ride and join me on this bridge season. Season 4 will launch in January.

I've already started recording stuff for it, and I've got some very fun things in store for you. Thanks for joining. I will see you next week. Have a fine day. Well, there's another one in the folks. We judge the service up to the cooks, and while we may have gotten a couple of dirty loves,

though the journey can never stop. Not from the bottom down to the top, we've got a new and more and everything. on lock And that's because cheerleys to the letter to the tea It's the perfect on a stone

mediocrity, octa-tie So now we got a brand new kind of test That's the words we got to know Could we should lay out in the air Triple Dipper got the bibs A main core Stuff big little in the middle

It's core now it's got to be the lot for what we use when we put things up on the charge game. Media after day. So there's another one in the books, yet there's another one in the books, and we will see you next week and next week, baby. Thank you.