BMO's New Instacart "Perk": The Real Cost and Who Actually Wins

So I’m watching LAFC gut out a 2-1 playoff win against Austin FC the other night. It’s happening at a place called BMO Stadium. A few hours later, I’m scrolling through the morning’s financial sludge and see a headline: BMO Capital lowers Microsoft stock price target to $625 on Azure growth By Investing.com. And then, for the trifecta, another piece of news spam hits my inbox: BMO Credit Cardholders Score Free Instacart+ And Monthly Grocery Discounts - Bank of Montreal (NYSE:BMO), Maplebear (NASDAQ:CART).

A soccer stadium, a lowered price target on a $4 trillion tech behemoth, and a coupon for your kale.

What in the ever-loving hell does any of this have to do with anything? On the surface, nothing. But if you stare into the corporate abyss long enough, you realize it’s all the same damn thing. It’s the slow, creeping colonization of every last corner of your life by a single, faceless brand that wants to be the operating system for your existence.

The Roar of the Crowd is Just Background Noise

Let’s start with the stadium. I saw it with my own eyes. The place was electric. A deflected cross leads to a brutal own goal for Austin FC, the kind of bad luck that makes you question karma. Then Austin claws back, ties it up, and for a glorious few minutes, the underdog has hope. The air in the stands is thick with that mix of cheap beer and desperate optimism. You can feel the collective heartbeat of thousands of people hanging on every pass. Then, in the 78th minute, Denis Bouanga’s shot gets deflected and Nathan Ordaz taps it in. Game over. LAFC wins.

It’s pure, uncut human drama. And the whole thing is sponsored by the Bank of Montreal.

But does a single person cheering for Son Heung-min or cursing a bad call give a damn about the logo plastered everywhere? Offcourse not. BMO isn't selling banking services to soccer fans. They're buying cultural real estate. They’re paying millions to become the wallpaper of your good memories. They want the BMO brand to be subconsciously associated with the thrill of victory, the passion of the crowd, the smell of the grass. It’s a subtle, insidious form of branding that has nothing to do with the product and everything to do with emotional infection.

It’s the bread and circuses division of the company. Keep the masses entertained in our branded arena, while the real action—the stuff that actually affects your life—happens somewhere else entirely. But where is that, exactly?

The High-Stakes Casino in the Sky

That "somewhere else" is a cubicle where some analyst at BMO Capital decided that Microsoft, despite smashing its earnings and revenue forecasts, wasn't quite good enough. They lowered their price target from $650 to $625.

Let’s translate this corporate doublespeak. Microsoft’s Azure cloud service grew 39%. The wizards on Wall Street apparently expected 40%. Because of that one-percent gap between spectacular growth and ludicrous expectations, BMO shaves $25 off its target price. This is a bad call. No, "bad" doesn't cover it—this is a perfect example of the meaningless, self-serving game that Wall Street plays with the global economy.

Microsoft reported earnings of $4.13 per share when $3.66 was expected. They brought in $77.7 billion when the forecast was $75.32 billion. By any sane metric, this is a home run. But BMO, the same entity whose name is on the stadium where real home runs happen, decides to flag a concern. Why? Because their real customers aren't you or me; their customers are the hedge funds and institutional investors who live and die by these fractional percentage points.

This is the two-faced nature of the modern mega-corp. One face is the smiling, community-friendly sponsor of your local sports team. The other is the cold, calculating card shark in the backroom, making bets on a rigged game that impacts your 401(k). They sell us community with one hand and manufacture anxiety with the other. It ain’t a coincidence; it’s the business model.

And just when you think their tentacles can’t reach any further, they show up at your front door.

Now They're Coming for Your Groceries

The final piece of this puzzle is the Instacart deal. Eligible BMO credit cardholders in Canada get free Instacart+ and monthly credits. The press release is full of the usual garbage. Andras Lazar, a BMO exec, says it’s about helping customers "make real financial progress."

Give me a goddamn break.

"Real financial progress." Is that what we’re calling a subscription trap for overpriced grocery delivery? Let's be brutally honest. This partnership has zero to do with your financial well-being. It’s about three things:

1. Data. BMO now gets a clearer picture of your spending habits, right down to the brand of toilet paper you buy.

2. Customer Stickiness. The more integrated BMO is with your daily life, the harder it is for you to leave them for another bank.

3. Normalizing Convenience Fees. They’re training you to accept a world where you pay a premium for basic errands, locking you into a cycle of service-based spending.

They want to be the stadium you visit, the firm that manages your portfolio, the card you use to buy milk, and honestly… it's exhausting. I tried Instacart once during the pandemic. They were out of boneless, skinless chicken thighs so the shopper, in their infinite wisdom, replaced them with a single, frozen Cornish game hen. I have no idea what to do with a Cornish game hen. It’s still in my freezer, a monument to the failures of the convenience economy.

So what does a soccer goal in Los Angeles have to do with a stock forecast in Toronto and a grocery coupon in Vancouver? Everything. It’s the same company, playing three different games, all designed to embed itself so deeply into the fabric of society that you can’t tell where your life ends and their brand begins.

It's All Just Plumbing

When you strip away the PR nonsense, you see what these companies really are. BMO isn't a bank or a stadium sponsor or a credit card company. It's a plumber. It's laying down the financial, cultural, and logistical pipes of modern life, and its goal is to make sure every transaction, every emotion, every purchase flows through its system. We’re not customers anymore. We’re just content, flowing through their pipes. And whether we’re cheering, investing, or eating, they’re at the valve, collecting a toll.