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McDonald’s has told FIFA it will not renew its long-running World Cup sponsorship, ending a 32-year association with the tournament and signaling a shift in how some major brands value large-scale sports rights, according to people familiar with the matter.
Marketing results and a strategic rethink
The decision follows what McDonald’s described internally as a mixed return from its biggest-ever World Cup marketing push. On an August earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Ian Borden said the effort “underperformed versus our expectations.” A person familiar with discussions between McDonald’s and FIFA told the original outlet the company also indicated it is not seeking to invest in next year’s Women’s World Cup.
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Industry data helps explain McDonald’s calculation. Research firm GlobalData Sport estimated the company’s World Cup deal was worth about $40 million a year. At the same time, management consultancy Kearney projects the global market for sports sponsorship and in-venue advertising at $52 billion in 2025, with 8%–9% annual growth through 2030—figures that point to a crowded and increasingly expensive sponsorship landscape.
Measuring return remains difficult
Part of the problem is measurement. Forrester research published in 2025 found 76% of US business-to-consumer marketing executives who invested in sponsorships the prior year reported struggling to calculate the return on investment for their sports partnerships. Mike Proulx, a vice president at Forrester, told Business Insider, “They are gaining a lot of traction around brand awareness, but can’t necessarily calculate the hard and fast ROI numbers to prove to their CFOs that the money and long-term commitment for these kinds of sponsorships are necessary.”
That difficulty in tying sponsorships to clear financial uplift appears to have influenced McDonald’s: the company told investors at its September investor day that it would focus marketing on its own intellectual property. Chief Marketing Officer Morgan Flatley said the company remains committed to sports in general but is prioritizing campaigns “on McDonald’s collection of iconic IP, not someone else’s.” McDonald’s continues to sponsor a range of properties, including France’s Ligue 1 soccer league and the All-American Games.
Broader implications for sports sponsorship
FIFA reported that the 2026 World Cup reached nearly 6 billion people worldwide across different platforms, and its latest budget forecasts $2.8 billion in marketing-rights revenue across the 2023–2026 commercial cycle—about 59% more than the 2019–2022 Qatar cycle. For 2026, FIFA also allowed host cities to sell local supporter packages, a change that analysts say has multiplied the number of commercial partners competing for attention.
Rory Natkiel, founder of sponsorship-effectiveness consultancy Box Count, warned that additional host-city partners can reduce an individual sponsor’s “share of property,” meaning each brand captures a smaller portion of the event’s commercial attention. That dynamic has prompted some legacy sponsors to reconsider where to allocate marketing dollars: last year Heineken announced it would end a 30-year UEFA Champions League partnership to shift spend to platforms it judged more proportionate to value creation while keeping rights in events such as Formula 1.
Longtime sponsorship executive Rory Stewart-Richardson said moving away from mega-rights can open opportunities to target different audiences. “If they start going into new sports and trying to attract a different audience to the global football audience — padel for a slightly more premium audience, or whatever it might be — it does create a new compelling angle and a new avenue for creativity,” he said. He added that other established brands may follow, focusing more on local markets and digital activations that let them “build from the consumer out” rather than relying on expensive global packages.
For McDonald’s, the exit from the World Cup underscores a reassessment of where large sponsorship dollars deliver measurable business value. Whether that leads to a wave of similar departures from other long-term rights deals will depend on how clearly brands can demonstrate returns from alternative, more-targeted investments.
