Not Lovin' It
When McDonald’s runs their Monopoly promotion every so often, I have fun collecting the game pieces to see how many I can get before they run out and the game ends. I don’t go out of my way to eat there, but someone in the family usually blows through the drive-through a few times a week, so they can add up pretty quickly.
I was just perusing the rules page, and made it down to the table at the bottom of the screen that lists your odds of winning something. The instant-win prize odds look about as you’d expect, with the chances in the range of one in a few thousand to one in a few hundred thousand. Get down to the big prizes, though, and yikes! You’d do better playing Powerball. Your chances of winning a movie package by collecting the yellow properties or an electronics package by collecting the green properties is one in two billion. You want to win the Dodge Viper by collecting all four railroads? Prepare for one in 17 billion!
I can’t imagine McDonald’s spends much on prizes for this game, because the chances of anyone winning anything are nearly zero.