Male Opps: Subway sponsors 100 Thieves amid significant digital spend increase (Score 59)

Sales Lead: Subway recently established a partnership with gaming giant 100 Thieves.

• Subway is now the company's Official Sandwich and the marquee partner of its professional League of Legends (LL) team.
  • As part of the former effort, Subway's logo will refresh 100 Thieves's match day jerseys.
  • Subway-branded jerseys will also be available to fans.
  • As part of the latter, the brand will overhaul 100 Thieves's dedicated League of Legends training room in CA.
  • This will give the team a competitive edge ahead of the LCS Summer Split, a key part of the NA championship.
• The brand will likely:
  • Pursue additional sponsorships
  • Keep ramping up digital spend
  • Seek new agency partners under a relatively new CMO (more below)
• Target demographic: 
  • ​​​​​​​Male Gen-Z and millennials
  • Its print ads target Spanish-speaking audiences.

Additional spending insights:

• Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: Subway has spent approximately $79m on national TV commercials YTD, 11% less than the approximately $89.1m spent by this point last year.
  • Last year: In 2022, the brand spent around $238.8m on this channel after having spent 11% more, around $264.6m, in 2021.
  • 2023 ad programming: Subway's 2023 commercials have targeted male sports enthusiasts watching shows such as NFL Football, College Basketball, NBA Basketball, SportsCenter, and the 2023 NFL Draft.
• Digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
  • YTD spend: Since the beginning of 2023, the brand has allocated roughly $11.7m toward digital ads, 67% more than the roughly $7m allocated within the same 2022 timeframe.
  • YTD data: YTD, Subway has earned ~1.3b digital impressions via YouTube (36%), Instagram (34%), Facebook (17%), desktop video (7%), desktop display (5%), and mobile display (1%) ads.
  • Last year: The sandwich chain's estimated full-year 2022 spend reached $22.8m, down 16% from that of $27.2m in 2021.
• Additional channel insights  
  • The brand utilizes Google Ads along with search, OOH, local broadcast, digital, print (Hispanic newspapers), radio, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and online video (primarily via Youtube.com) ads.
  • Subway sponsors podcasts such as Get Up and Juicy Scoop with Heather McDonald.

Additional agency insights:

• Opportunity: If you haven't yet done so, reach out soon to get on the radar of Carrie Walsh, who became Subway's global CMO last year.
• Current agency roster:
  • Proof Advertising​​​​​​​: Creative, media, and experiential AOR
  • Dentsu mcgarrybowen: Creative AOR
  • Carat: Media AOR
  • Tombras: Social AOR
  • FleishmanHillard: PR AOR
  • INVNT Group: Experiential agency partner

Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser.