Subway is considering a ground-breaking sponsorship deal with Formula One which could see several of the sport’s teams and superstar drivers teaming up to promote the brand. Subway was founded in the US in 1965 by billionaire Fred DeLuca but the UK and Ireland has become its biggest market outside America since the company opened its first store across the Atlantic in 1994. Its sponsorship strategy centres on athletes such as English boxer Anthony Ogogo and Holly Bleasdale, who holds the British pole vault record. Zak Brown, chief executive of JMI which handles Subway’s motorsport sponsorship, says that F1 would be the ‘perfect’ fit. ‘I took the Subway Chief Marketing Officer to meet Bernie [Ecclestone, F1’s chief executive] in Montreal last year, and I would say they have been exploring it for a year,’ says Mr Brown. ‘They are all about the consumer, they are massive media buyers so they would look at a sport and see if it stacks up from a media point of view and Formula One does.’ Subway is JMI’s oldest client and first worked with it in 2002. JMI is responsible for bringing Subway to F1’s American rival NASCAR, where it sponsors a team, a driver and a race (#99 Carl Edwards, no Cup race in 2014). Mr Brown says it is likely Subway would follow the same model in F1.(in part from The Telegraph), no word if thie would affect the sponsor of the #99 Roush Fenway Racing Ford and/or Carl Edwards.(4-14-2014)
