InkBlog

MCDONALD’S Monopoly is back for another year, with more than $252 million worth of prizes up for grabs — but just how likely are you to actually win?

If you’re happy to settle for a Big Mac, large fries or a frozen Coke, you’ve actually got a pretty good chance. McDonald’s says on average, one in five of the 139,070,896 peel-off tickets yield an “instant win” prize.

But that’s not what we’re here for. The game is called McDonald’s Monopoly, and the draw has always been collecting the Monopoly pieces for the chance to win a major prize — the “collect to win” tickets.

For example, collect all three red pieces — The Strand, Fleet Street and Trafalgar Square — and you’ll get a year’s worth of fuel from BP. Collect the yellow Leicester Square, Piccadilly and Coventry Street, and you’ll get a brand-new Weber barbecue.

“By collecting some of the most sought-after tickets in the game — like Oxford Street, Liverpool Station or Mayfair — customers can also score prizes like a Suzuki Vitara, a $10,000 Flight Centre gift card or a Sony Ultimate Entertainment Pack,” a McDonald’s spokeswoman said.

Only really, the whole “collect to win” aspect is just a facade. In each set, one of the pieces will be extremely rare while the others are common. It is technically a promotional lottery — score the lucky piece in a given set and you’ve effectively won.

Jerome Jacobsen, the former head of security for the firm responsible for running the promotion in the US, stole dozens of these valuable pieces over more than a decade, passing them off to associates to claim more than $32 million in cash and prizes.

He was finally brought down in 2001 after a tip-off to the FBI and ended up spending three years in jail for mail fraud. Last month, Deadline revealed Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were making a movie based on the true crime story.

But what if you want to win the game fair and square?

Writing in The Conversation, Monash University postgraduate student Sarah Belet and University of Melbourne mathematics lecturer Jennifer Flegg did some basic number-crunching to figure out the probabilities of winning each of this year’s major prizes.

“In this year’s game there are two prizes available of a year of free fuel,” they wrote. “So it’s entirely possible that the probability of finding that final red ticket in the set could be as low as two in 136 million.”

Given there’s only one prize of a year’s car rental on offer, the odds of winning are one in 136 million. The odds of winning one of the two free cars are one in 68 million. On the other hand, there are eight $1000 shopping vouchers up for grabs, putting your odds of winning at one in 17 million.

“If you remember that McDonald’s Monopoly is much like a regular lottery, you’ll be better off as you can relax and know that there’s next to no chance that you will win a major prize,” Belet and Flegg write.

“The instant win aspect is a nice bonus if you’re already planning on having a meal at McDonald’s, since it’s not all that unlikely that you could end up with some extra fries or a drink.”

So which piece in each set is the rare one?

Strangely enough, McDonald’s refuses to provide any comment on how the tickets are distributed to “maintain integrity of the promotion”. But a quick scan of social media makes it pretty obvious which ones people are desperate to find.

These are the nine pieces you should definitely not throw away:

• Marlborough Street

Prize: $1000 Ozsale voucher

Odds: 1 in 17 million

• Piccadilly

Prize: Weber Genesis II LX BBQ

Odds: 1 in 34 million

• Whitehall

Prize: Alienware Area-51 gaming PC

Odds: 1 in 45 million

• Old Kent Road

Prize: Pioneer FS-W40 sound system

Odds: 1 in 45 million

• Regent Street

Prize: Suzuki Vitara RT-S Automatic

Odds: 1 in 68 million

• Fleet Street

Prize: One year BP fuel gift card

Odds: 1 in 68 million

• Park Lane

Prize: $5000 Flight Centre gift card

Odds: 1 in 68 million

• Euston Road

Prize: $10,000 Bay Leather Republic voucher

Odds: 1 in 136 million

• Fenchurch Street Station

Prize: One year Europcar car hire

Odds: 1 in 136 million

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