Photo Credit: Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP
Raptors’ Success Costs McDonald’s Millions
Fans around the globe are ‘lovin’ the 2018-19 Toronto Raptors, but fast food giant McDonald’s might not be on the hype train for a very specific reason.
To explain why, we need to go back to last year’s playoffs. Just after the Toronto Raptors were swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers, the senior marketing manager for McDonald’s in eastern Canada worked out a deal with the franchise that would make McDonald’s restaurants in Ontario give out a free medium french fries to everyone stopping by the restaurants, every time the Raptors made at least 12 three-pointers.
That was pre-Kawhi. No one expected the Raptors to be that good, let alone reach (and possibly win) the NBA Finals.
Turns out that McDonald’s has given away nearly three times the original 700,000-order estimate.
McDonald’s didn’t underestimate the Raptors so much as it did the appetite for free fries in Ontario. The regular season’s two million free orders — at an average menu price of $2.89 — was $5.4 million worth of fries.
While full tallies for the playoffs were not available, in Game One of the finals alone, where the Raptors hit 13 threes, McDonald’s gave away a record 80,000 free orders.
$5.4 million in Canadian dollars translates to a little more than $4 million USD. So you can say that the Raptors’ success cost McDonald’s quite the amount of money. I guess they’ll survive though.
