Subway claims that nearly 10,000 people signed up to change their name to ‘Subway’ in exchange for free sandwiches for life

• Subway claims that nearly 10,000 people entered its competition to change their name to “Subway.”
• The winner gets free sandwiches “for life” – which is actually $50,000 in gift cards.
• At current prices, if you plan to eat a grilled-chicken footlong a day, this wouldn’t even last 11 years at some stores.

Subway claims that nearly 10,000 people entered its competition to change their name to “Subway” and get free sandwiches “for life.”

Between August 1 and 4, close to 10,000 people signed up to the sandwich chain’s Name Change Challenge, it said on Tuesday. The free sandwiches for life, as promised by Subway, come in the form of $50,000 in gift cards.

The winner, who Subway says will be announced later this month, has to change their legal first name to “Subway” within four months and “provide satisfactory proof” of this using LegalZoom.

Prices vary greatly between stores as they’re set by individual franchisees, so the amount of sandwiches you can actually get depends on where you live. If a classic grilled-chicken footlong is your go-to order, you could, for example, use your gift cards to buy 5,600 of the sandwiches plus several cookies from the store in a BP gas station at 7030 Highway 27, Frostproof, Florida at current prices, or just 3,849 for $12.99 at the store at 1 Exchange Place, Jersey City, New Jersey.

And it isn’t even the most expensive sandwich the Jersey City store sells — its Beast footlong, for example, would set you back $17.99, plus extra for add-ons.

If you plan to eat a grilled-chicken footlong a day, the gift cards wouldn’t even last you for 11 years at the Jersey City store. Alternatively, you could just splash out on sides – The Frostproof store charges $9.59 for a 12-pack of cookies, so in total you could buy more than 62,500 cookies with the gift cards.

Subway will conduct a background check on the potential winner before they can get the prize, and says it can disqualify them if it finds information “inconsistent with the positive images” associated with the company, per the competition’s terms and conditions.  The sweepstakes was only open to legal US residents ages 18 years or older, with higher age limits in Alabama, Nevada, and Mississippi.

Subway will also reimburse the winner for $750 for legal and processing costs involved in changing their name.

Subway is using the competition as a chance to promote the latest developments in its menu overhaul. The brand says it’s spent more than $80 million to bring deli meat slicers to over 20,000 US restaurants and has unveiled a range of so-called Deli Hero subs featuring the sliced meats.