McDonald’s is an official sponsor of EA Sports FC25. The deal cost millions. Burger King had no budget for a gaming sponsorship and no plan to acquire one. What it had, after Happiness Brussels spent time looking through a database of 17,000 real footballers, was something considerably more useful: a loophole.
The Discovery
FC25’s most significant audio update for the 2025 season was the introduction of an AI-powered dynamic commentary system. In previous versions of the game, in-game commentators only voiced the names of well-known players, the kind whose names had been individually recorded in a studio. Lesser-known players in lower divisions went unnamed. The AI update changed that. For the first time, every player in the game’s database, all 17,000 of them, could have their name called out by the commentator during play.
Happiness Brussels noticed that this update created a specific and exploitable condition. Among those 17,000 players were real footballers whose surnames were Burger and King, spread across different divisions. Wouter Burger, a Dutch midfielder, was playing for Stoke City in the English Championship. Multiple players named King existed across various leagues. When Burger received the ball, the AI commentator said “Burger.” When he passed to King, the commentator said “King.” The sequence was unavoidable, automatic, and generated by EA Sports’ own technology.
Burger King had found a way to make EA Sports’ AI system advertise their brand inside a game officially sponsored by their competitor.
The Activation
Happiness Brussels and Burger King Belgium built a campaign around that discovery. Gaming influencers were briefed and sent onto Twitch and YouTube with a specific mission: build Ultimate Team squads containing players named Burger and King, demonstrate the pass in livestreams watched by thousands of FC25 players, and explain how to claim the reward.
The mechanic was precise. Players had to add Burger and King to their squads, execute the pass that forced the commentator to say the brand name, capture the moment on video, and post the clip on social media with the campaign hashtag. Every verified clip earned a Burger King coupon. The gamers became the campaign’s distribution network. Every person who tried the activation produced a new piece of content carrying the same brand name the commentator had just said involuntarily.
The activation was announced through key FC25 streamers who did multiple livestreams demonstrating the promo, inviting their communities to participate, and generating ongoing content from audience attempts. The earned media from the influencer ecosystem cost significantly less than the official EA Sports sponsorship McDonald’s had purchased.
The Results
The words “Burger” and “King” were mentioned more than 200,000 times in-game within the first week of the campaign. Professional footballers joined the activation on their own social channels, extending the reach beyond the gaming community into mainstream sports audiences. Online engagement across Burger King’s channels increased by 81% during the campaign period.
The One Show recognised the campaign with a Pencil. D&AD awarded it in its archive. The industry recognition reflected what the juries identified: a campaign that created an entirely new advertising channel, in-game audio commentary, and used it without paying the platform a single dollar.
The Broader Argument
The Burger to King campaign belongs to a specific and growing creative tradition in which challenger brands use their competitor’s own infrastructure as the medium for their advertising. Pepsi found the word OK hidden inside the Diet Coke name. Burger King has used McDonald’s Ronald McDonald mascot against it across multiple campaigns for over a decade. Burger to King extends that tradition into gaming, using EA Sports’ own AI technology to force the commentary team of an officially McDonald’s-sponsored game to repeatedly say the name of McDonald’s biggest competitor.
EA Sports was not involved. McDonald’s was not consulted. The AI did exactly what it was designed to do. Burger King simply noticed what happened when it did.
Campaign Name: Burger to King
Agency Name: Happiness Brussels (FCB alliance)
Brand Name: Burger King Belgium
Location: Belgium (global gaming activation via FC25 Ultimate Team; October 2024)
