# The mathematics of McDonald’s Monopoly **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 24, 2024, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108 "2024-12-24T12:17:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/61 "2025-01-08T15:36:21Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Perhaps a difference is the instant win tickets; someone upthread said that in the US you don’t know if you’ve won a burger or whatever until you checked the code somewhere? That wasn’t the case, at least in my memory – the instant-win food items said so right on the ticket. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/62 "2025-01-08T15:36:57Z")
Ah OK, I must have misunderstood. I don’t know why it’s fizzled in the US then. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/63 "2025-01-08T15:39:25Z")
There were both instant win tickets and puzzle piece tickets. Winners of $20 to $100 weren’t that uncommon we got them at our store ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/64 "2025-01-08T15:41:30Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I don’t know why it’s fizzled in the US then. My suspicion is some combination of: - Wearout: they ran that promotion, fundamentally unchanged in its execution, for close to 30 years in the U.S., and maybe, as noted by others, it wasn’t generating enough incremental sales/visits anymore - Changes in corporate strategy in the U.S. (including focusing on driving usage of their mobile app) - Possibly, some consumers believing that the game was “fixed,” and that they had no chance to win a big prize, due to the scandal ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/65 "2025-01-08T17:21:55Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > . I guarantee that when I worked at McDonalds decades ago people loved those promotions. N In the 1990s Watt Pottery was extremely collectible to the point of being a frenzy at the national conventions. I founded the Watt Pottery Collectors USA and ran the convention. There was another even larger collectors club as well. When I was attending the other convention, which took over most of a large motel, the word got out that the local McDonald’s had just released the latest Beanie Baby figure in their ongoing promotion… The motel practically cleared out as so many people rushed to McDonald’s to grab one. Soon there were Beanie Babys for display and sale in many of the rooms. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/66 "2025-01-08T18:10:50Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > The game tickets themselves were not attached to anything and they sent us _boxes_ of these things. > As you can expect, we stole the fuck out of these things. If 40% went to customers, I would be surprised. My wife had a similar story for back in the day when they had some promtion where you peel the piece off of cups; as shift supervisor she caught a bunch of kids going through the old stock, set aside after they switched back to regular cups. It was mainly for prizes like “free fries” and she gave them the “don’t let me catch you doing that again” speech. > [@Folly](#): > > Other countries still get the Monopoly game but we (the U.S.) don’t. Probably because of that big scandal. Monopoly was just run again here in Canada ending a few months ago. The only thing I won was a 50% off at some picture-framing (web site?). Needless to say, never used it. The previous time, I think I had a free muffin or something I never collected. I see ads for some gambling site(?) on US TV channels featuring the little mustachio’d millionaire in his top hat, so I wonder if it’s due to licensing conflicts with the character. Either (a) they lost the right to use him in the USA or (b) they don’t want McD to be confused or associated with a gambling site. I recall a news item about some company in Canada, back in the 70’s I think, that cleverly had a similar “collect a match” contest. Apparently they thought they were being clever by sending half the pieces to one area of Canada and the matching halves to another. Back in those days, when transport and communications were more expensive, markets were actually considered isolated. The article mentioned that Winnipeg, for example, stuck in the middle of nowhere a long way from other decent sized metropolises, used to be an ideal test market because test products rarely leaked to the rest of the country. Anyway, apparently someone figured out “Hey, the other piece is common as borscht in _X!_” and vice versa. People began trading them through the mail and the company lost hundreds of thousands on the promotion. You can watch the documentary on McD Monopoly, but IIRC the short version, he had his friends collecting the prizes in various locations they happened to be at. Some enterprising statistician realized “the odds of so many of these prizes being collected in less populated states is statistically impossible.” which triggered the investigation. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2025, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/67 "2025-01-08T18:37:43Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > Most of you will be familiar with the Monopoly-themed sweepstakes promotion periodically held by McDonald’s. Certain products or meals come with a lottery ticket, which may be either an instant win (such as a free dessert), or one of the streets on the Monopoly board (or a blank). In case it’s a street, you need to collect all streets that form a set on the game board, and then you can win a prize. Other companies have, of course, similar promotions with different themes. > > In principle, I can see two ways McDonald’s could calculate the number of prizes they can expect to pay out under this scheme. Either all the streets in each set are printed and distributed roughly evenly, and they use stochastics (based on assumptions about the number of tickets each customer gets) to calculate the probability that a customer will end up with a full set. Or they print two of the three streets in a set in very large numbers, and the third one in very small numbers, and the absolute numbers in which this third street exists is the ceiling for the overall number of prizes to be won. > > I’ve always assumed they use the second method - it gives them more control over the number of prizes they need to pay out, and it can’t be subverted by players exchanging tickets among each other. But I’ve always felt that it’s a bit deceitful - it gives lots of people the impression that they’re close to winning because they’re just one street short of a full set, yet the likelihood of getting the missing street is tiny. This may, of course, be a feature of the scheme, not a bug, to keep people hooked. Am I right, and this is how it works? As has been answered multiple times, McDonald’s used the “limited numbers of one piece in the set” method, and it is not the first by any wild stretch of the imagination to do this. Back in the late 1960s, Shell ran a couple of games - one with Presidents of the USA, then one with states - where you collected coins, and getting particular sets of coins won prizes; quite a few people got all but one coin for each of the large prizes. I remember a Monopoly contest run in California from I think the 1970s where the object was to collect stamps representing the four NFL teams there at the time (49ers, Raiders, Rams, Chargers), and the Personals section of the Want Ads in the San Francisco Chronicle had quite a few “Will pay (some amount up to half of the prize) for (the rare stamp for the grand prize)” ads; columnist Herb Caen even mentioned it when, reportedly, the person who actually got that stamp didn’t realize its rarity and threw it in the trash. The Albertsons chain (Albertsons, Vons, Safeway, et al.) had its own Monopoly contest, but instead of using the game’s properties, the stamps were just numbers. This one added a twist; for most of the larger prizes, in addition to one of the pieces being rare, there was a second “semi-rare” piece. > [@madmonk28](#): > > That gag is based on McDonalds losing a ton of money in the 1984 Olympics. I worked at McDonalds then. > > [McDonald's 1984 Olympics promotion - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_1984_Olympics_promotion) What most people don’t remember is, McDonald’s started doing it in 1972. The 1972 version had a different rule; if USA won more than one medal in event, you won each prize available for those medals - and only stamps where USA was entered were printed. That was one of the problems with 1984; as the hosts, USA was automatically entered in every event. I think it was tried again in 1988, but in 1992, when NBA players were allowed in the Olympics, McDonald’s switch to giving away “Dream Team” cups for their drinks. ---
**Author:** ![zbuzz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e19b73/32.png) [@zbuzz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zbuzz)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2025, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/68 "2025-01-09T07:25:36Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > You can watch the documentary on McD Monopoly, but IIRC the short version, he had his friends collecting the prizes in various locations they happened to be at. Some enterprising statistician realized “the odds of so many of these prizes being collected in less populated states is statistically impossible.” which triggered the investigation. A lot of them were from the Jacksonville area with some faking their real addresses with PO boxes, but no one realized that until after the investigation started. What sparked the investigation was an informant calling the FBI and telling them that three of the million dollar winners were related. In the documentary, we never learn exactly who all three were, but Jerry Colombo won a Dodge Viper, his wife Robin’s father was a million dollar prize winner and Robin’s friend Gloria Brown was a million dollar prize winner. edit to add for shits and giggles: if you search Google for “mcdonald’s monopoly million dollar winners,” Google’s generative AI summary lists all of the McMillions documentary executive producers, including Mark Wahlberg, as being “involved in the scheme.” ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2025, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/69 "2025-09-29T17:06:33Z")
Just updating this thread to say that McDonald’s will bring back the Monopoly promotion to the US after a long hiatus: > **[McDonald’s is bringing back Monopoly after a decade — with a twist | CNN...](https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/29/food/mcdonalds-monopoly-game-return)** > > McDonald’s is bringing back a fan favorite game after a nearly decade hiatus in its latest effort to spur sales. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/70 "2025-09-30T17:45:05Z")
> [@zbuzz](#): > > What sparked the investigation was an informant calling the FBI and telling them that three of the million dollar winners were related. Thanks. I realize on re-watching the documentary a while ago that the “statistically impossible” was just a throw-away line by one of the investigators looking into the informant’s story. “How did nobody notice this? It’s statistically impossible.” ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/71 "2025-09-30T18:05:13Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > “How did nobody notice this? It’s statistically impossible.” Speaking as a trained statistician, and to quote _Pirates of the Caribbean_: “It’s not possible!” “Not _ **probable** _.” ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108/72 "2025-09-30T18:49:18Z")
> [@markn\_1](#): > > I have a vague memory that when I was a child, there was a scratch-off game where every card was a winner, but you had to scratch off a certain set of items in a large list. Something like, you had to pick the correct 4 out of 25 items. Scratching one incorrect item would make the card a loser. But thinking about it, it seems unlikely that a company would risk releasing a game like this with such potential for a big loss if someone figures out how to view the unscratched items, or restore scratched items, etc. Was there ever a game or lottery like this? You might be thinking of the 1992 Topps baseball cards contest. The scratch-off card was a matching game and you were given eight circles and told to scratch three. If your three matched, you’d win a special pack of cards. But you could shine a flashlight behind the card and know which three circles to scratch to win. This required Topps to produce a lot more of the special packs than they otherwise planned to. And cards that were expected to be rare turned out to be fairly plentiful. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-mathematics-of-mcdonald-s-monopoly/1012108.md?page=3)