The Showdown turns a Big Mac into Super Bowl theatre
On 31 January 1993, McDonald's aired The Showdown during Super Bowl XXVII, a 60 second Leo Burnett commercial that paired two of basketball's most defining figures, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, in an escalating game of H-O-R-S-E for a single Big Mac and a side of fries.1, 2 The brief was tied to the 25th anniversary of the Big Mac, created in 1967 by Pittsburgh franchisee Jim Delligatti and served in all U.S. McDonald's restaurants from 1968, and Leo Burnett's Chicago office answered with a simple competitive frame that did not need a single line of product copy to make the point.3, 4 Joe Pytka, by then the most experienced commercial director in American television, took the assignment and shot the action with the restraint of a sports broadcast, allowing the choreography of the shots themselves to carry the comedy.3, 4
An anniversary brief and a one-take conceit
The set-up was deliberately spare. Jordan walked into an empty gym, found Bird already practising, and accepted a wager: the first to miss watches the winner eat the meal sitting on a bench at half court.3, 4, 5 The two players began trading shots, each one slightly more improbable than the last. The catchphrase "nothing but net" anchored the spot's rhythm, while each player answered the other with a more ambitious shot.3 The escalation continued past the gym roof, across a Chicago expressway, off a billboard, through a window and along a wall, until both players were lining up an attempt from the observation deck of the John Hancock Center.3, 5, 6 The Big Mac waited on the bench, never eaten, never mentioned by name, never compared with anything else on the McDonald's menu.
Casting two retired rivals at the right moment
Casting was central to the commercial's effect. Bird had announced his retirement from the Boston Celtics on 18 August 1992, after the 1991 to 1992 season, five and a half months before the spot aired, and Jordan was in the middle of his second NBA Most Valuable Player run with the Chicago Bulls.4 Their on-court rivalry was already part of basketball mythology, and Leo Burnett's planners read the moment correctly. Pairing a recently retired Bird with a still active Jordan let the spot trade on nostalgia without sacrificing current relevance, and the production allowed both players to inhabit their familiar personae, Bird the laconic shooter, Jordan the unflappable closer, without asking either to act.
Pytka, Leo Burnett and the spot's afterlife
Joe Pytka shot the live action on location in Chicago and on closed sets, with the more elaborate shots completed through edits and trick cuts rather than the visual effects work that would have defined a similar idea a decade later.7 Leo Burnett, which had held the McDonald's account since 1981, used the commercial as the centrepiece of a multi week Big Mac anniversary push that included in-restaurant signage, packaging callouts and a tagline focused on the sandwich's quarter-century in the menu.2 The spot ran in the second commercial pod of Super Bowl XXVII between the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills, the most watched single broadcast of the American television year, and was repeated through the spring as part of the agency's national rotation.1
The phrase "off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall, nothing but net" became a playground refrain within weeks of the broadcast, and the construction of the spot, two athletes, an escalating call and response, a brand product as both prize and bystander, was reused by other categories for the next decade.2, 6, 7 McDonald's itself returned to the format in 1994 with a Bird, Jordan and Charles Barkley sequel at Super Bowl XXVIII, and again in 2010 in a remake directed by Tate Taylor that paired LeBron James and Dwight Howard.2, 3, 7, 8 Neither sequel matched the cultural reach of the original, but both confirmed that the conceit had become a permanent piece of the McDonald's heritage library.
The commercial's place in the McDonald's record sits next to the introduction of the Golden Arches in 1962 and the 1971 You Deserve a Break Today platform from Needham, Harper & Steers. It was the first time McDonald's had used a Super Bowl spot to anchor an anniversary moment for a single product without leaning on price, promotion or new menu launches, and the technique, athlete pairing, escalating creative, restrained product role, became part of the standard McDonald's playbook for sports tied advertising in the decades that followed.
Source: Channel 23: The Complete Michael Jordan Archive Youtube
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. Wikipedia, "Super Bowl XXVII", for the game being played on 31 January 1993 between the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills and broadcast by NBC, for its Nielsen rating of 45.1 with an estimated 90.99 million viewers, and for the halftime audience of 133.4 million, which the article describes as "the most watched television broadcast of all time"; the article does not mention the McDonald's spot. With Superbowl-ads.com, "1993 MCDONALDS - Larry Bird And Michael Jordan Super Bowl Ad", dated 1 February 1993 on the page, for the spot being a 1993 Super Bowl commercial in which "Larry Bird And Michael Jordan play for a Big Mac and fries". Neither page gives the spot's length, the commercial pod it ran in or a repeat rotation through the spring. The YouTube upload of the spot listed in the verse could not be read, the fetch being refused with a rate limit, page not reachable on 2 October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXVII, https://www.superbowl-ads.com/1993-mcdonalds-larry-bird-and-michael-jordan/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1shK-j_u6LI
2. Muse by Clios, "Nothing but Net: Jordan and Bird's Epic Showdown for McDonald's", 26 January 2022, for the spot being "the Leo Burnett commercial whose legacy includes a catchphrase and a feature film", and for "the larger-than-life game of H.O.R.S.E. played by Michael Jordan and Larry Bird for a McDonald's Big Mac in 1993", presented among Muse's Super Bowl classics; it replaces the Muse address listed in the verse, which now opens an unrelated May 2024 article on mental health campaigns. Campaign, I-Hsien Sherwood, "The 12 best McDonald's ads from Leo Burnett's 35-year run", 20 September 2016, for "Leo Burnett won the entire national McDonald's account in 1981", for the Jordan and Bird spots having "debuted during the 1993 Super Bowl", for "'Nothin' but net' became part of the vernacular", and for McDonald's reprising the ad in 2010 with LeBron James and Dwight Howard, "Larry Bird made a cameo, but Michael Jordan didn't take part." Neither piece names Leo Burnett's Chicago office or mentions in-restaurant signage, packaging callouts or an anniversary tagline. The McDonald's newsroom index listed in the verse returned 404 and no McDonald's page on the spot was found, page not reachable on 2 October 2026. https://musebyclios.com/sports/nothing-but-net-jordan-and-birds-epic-showdown-for-mcdonalds/, https://musebyclios.com/super-bowl-classics/mcdonalds/, https://www.campaignlive.com/article/12-best-mcdonalds-ads-leo-burnetts-35-year-run/1409376 and https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/news-stories.html
3. The Drum, Kenneth Hein, "World's best ads ever #72: McDonald's 'The Showdown' aims high with two Super Bowl legends", 14 June 2022, for the spot having "aired during the Super Bowl in 1993", for "Directed by Joe Pytka, the spot celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Big Mac", for the stake, "If Bird wins he gets to eat Jordan's lunch, which is, of course, a Big Mac and fries", and the condition "No dunking", for the shot "from atop the John Hancock tower", for the lunch left uneaten, "It appears Jordan's lunch might still be sitting in that gym", for "'nothing but net' became the catchphrase for a flawless shot", and for the sequel "where they shoot from outer space and deny Charles Barkley the chance to join in the fun". The piece names no agency, gives no year for the sequel and does not say which player calls "nothing but net". https://www.thedrum.com/news/2022/06/14/world-s-best-ads-ever-72-mcdonald-s-the-showdown-aims-high-with-two-super-bowl
4. Wikipedia, "Big Mac", "Larry Bird" and "Joe Pytka". "Big Mac" for "The Big Mac was created by Jim Delligatti", for its debut "at the McDonald's owned by Delligatti in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on April 22, 1967", and for its addition "to the menu of all U.S. McDonald's restaurants in 1968". "Larry Bird" for "On August 18, 1992, Bird announced his retirement from the NBA", five and a half months before the broadcast, and for the wager as the article describes it, "the winner got Jordan's lunch and the loser had to watch the winner eat"; the same article dates the commercial to 1991, which every other source contradicts. "Joe Pytka" for Pytka holding the record for the most Directors Guild of America nominations for directing commercials and for his "extensive work" with Michael Jordan; it does not call him the most experienced commercial director and does not mention McDonald's. None of the three covers Jordan's MVP record. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Bird and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Pytka
5. The Christian Science Monitor, Schuyler Velasco, "Five greatest Super Bowl ads of all time (+video)", 30 January 2013, which ranks The Showdown fifth, for Jordan "walking into a practice gym with a bag of McDonald's food", for "Bird challenges him to a shooting contest for it", and for the last shot attempted "from the top of the Hancock Center in Chicago". The piece names no agency or director. https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2013/0130/Five-greatest-Super-Bowl-ads-of-all-time-video/The-Showdown-McDonald-s-1993
6. Adweek, David Gianatasio, "McDonald's Remakes Classic Jordan-Bird Ad, This Time on the Football Field", date not shown on the fetched page, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the shot call as the piece quotes it, "Off the expressway, over the river, off the billboard, through the window, off the wall …", and for its attribution of that call to Jordan, "as Jordan called a fantastical shot". The piece ends the quotation before "nothing but net" and places the final shot on the Sears Tower, where every other source names the John Hancock Center. https://www.adweek.com/creativity/mcdonalds-remakes-classic-jordan-bird-ad-time-football-field-152454/
7. Yahoo Sports, Jeff Eisenberg, "Iconic Sports Commercials: Michael Jordan vs. Larry Bird", 17 July 2019, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for copywriter Jim Ferguson and art director Bob Shallcross, "then the top creative team at Leo Burnett Worldwide", and director Joe Pytka, for a shoot "in the rafters of what is now known as Allstate Arena" and a final sequence "from atop the 100-story Chicago skyscraper", the John Hancock Center, for the trick shots made to look easy "with the assistance of some clever video editing", for "Within days of the Jordan-Bird commercial airing during the Super Bowl, the catchphrase 'nothing but net' became ingrained in popular culture", and for "a 1994 sequel that included Charles Barkley and an ill-fated 2010 remake that starred Dwight Howard and LeBron James". With the Paley Center for Media catalogue record "McDonald's: One Year Later {Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, & Charles Barkley}", off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for that sequel's running time of 0:01:00, its subject heading "Super Bowl XXVIII - 1994" and its credits for Cheryl Berman, Bob Shallcross and Jim Ferguson. Together they settle the corrected sequel year. https://sports.yahoo.com/iconic-sports-commercials-michael-jordan-vs-larry-bird-061610577.html and https://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=first&p=101&item=AT:34810.046
8. NPR, listed in the verse as "McDonald's Remakes Byrd-Jordan Ad With New Stars", 5 February 2010, for the 2010 remake; the page refused automated access under the publisher's robots rules and could not be read, page not reachable on 2 October 2026. Wikipedia, "List of 2010s Super Bowl commercials", stands in for it, for the 2010 entry "In a 2010 NBA interpretation of the 1993 Showdown commercial, NBA stars Dwight Howard and LeBron James play a slam dunk version of H-O-R-S-E, with the same prize as before." No source read names a director for the 2010 spot. https://www.npr.org/2010/02/05/123399695/mcdonalds-remakes-byrd-jordan-ad-with-new-stars and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_2010s_Super_Bowl_commercials
