Source: Mike LaChance

Last year, Subway created a series of TV ads featuring women’s soccer player Megan Rapinoe, who is known for kneeling during the national anthem.

After receiving multiple complaints from Subway franchise owners, the company pulled the ads but the damage was already done.

Subway is still getting backlash months later and it has had a disastrous effect on business.

Breitbart News reports:

Report: Backlash over Ads Featuring Anthem-Kneeler Megan Rapinoe Adds to Subway’s Woes

The Subway fast-food chain has been struggling — even before the coronavirus — but many franchise owners also felt that hiring U.S. soccer star and national anthem protester Megan Rapinoe as a national spokesperson was no help at all.

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According to a report in the New York Post, Subway lost 1,043 outlets in 2021, which was more than the new outlets they opened.

The loss only added to the 1,609 lost in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus hysteria and the 999 lost in 2019. The number of closed restaurants means that Subway’s national footprint has contracted 15 percent since 2019 and 22 percent overall since 2016.

In contrast, McDonald’s only contracted 3.4 percent over the last few years during the COVID mess.

So, what is going wrong? Well, some franchise owners feel that hiring Megan Rapinoe was just one of the contributing factors to Subway’s mounting woes…

Indeed, the struggling fast-food company was met with an organized boycott by customers who were upset that Subway would choose to laud a woman who attended an Olympics on foreign soil only to protest against the country that made her rich.

You can still see the anger on social media:

Subway made a huge mistake.