Pokémon GO Reveals The Insane Amount of Money They Get for Sending People to McDonald’s, Starbucks

June 1, 2017

Niantic has finally revealed how much Pokémon GO’s “sponsored locations” pay them for every visitor the popular game brings into their establishments.

The sponsored locations are turned into Pokémon GO “gyms” where players can engage in virtual battle. Players of Pokémon GO would flock to such locations to acquire special virtual goods for the game which are found in stations called “PokéStops.”

The company has previously stated that businesses, like McDonald’s Japan, have benefited from the 500 million visitors that the game has so far driven to their outlets. Sprint and Starbucks’ 7,800 locations in the U.S., have also signed up with Pokémon GO in hopes of attracting store traffic from the youth demographic.

In a recent interview with Brazil’s Globo newspaper, Niantic executive Mathieu de Fayet revealed how much the businesses pay to the game maker.

“The idea is to offer players items at certain locations, and partners pay $0.15 for each visitor attracted to the game. And we’ve already attracted 500 million visitors. In Japan [at the game’s peak last summer], each activated McDonald’s store attracted 2,000 visitors a day,” said (as translated by the paper) the VP of strategic partnerships.

A Niantic spokesperson would later clarify to TechCrunch that the amount mentioned is incorrect, which might be due to an error in translation.

“Niantic’s cost per visit (CPV) model visit has partners spending less than $.50 / daily unique visit to sponsored locations,” the company was quoted as saying.

If the $0.50 figure is accurate, that meant the sponsorships would have generated about $250 million. At $0.15 per visit, the amount would still be at an impressive $75 million.

At the height of the game’s popularity last year, McDonald’s Japan, which has 3,000 stores, would have paid around $900,000 at the $0.15 rate per visitor, or $3 million per day at $0.50 rate for the Pokémon GO sponsorship.

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