🎙️ Fun, Audience, and Franchise: How Subway Surfers Made it to the Oscars

Welcome to episode 20 of The Speakeasy!

In this episode, SYBO CEO Mathias Gredal Nørvig joins Joe and Gabriella to break down where they draw the line between growth and overexploitation, what he'd advise anyone building a mobile-first IP from scratch today, and how the team responds nimbly to UGC and surprise moments of cultural caché.

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One of the clearest signs Subway Surfers had broken into the cultural mainstream came via the 2026 Oscars, when Conan O'Brien's writers reached for the game as visual shorthand for youth culture. SYBO didn't pay a cent for that spot; it was simply a writers' room scanning what was trending, and Subway Surfers turning up as one of the most-used hashtags on TikTok organically.

That's the kind of cultural cache money can't buy or force, and it traces back to a founding ingredient Mathias keeps returning to: fun, powered by genuine passion.

SYBO’s founders built Subway Surfers around what they truly loved: street, hip-hop and graffiti culture. And building something based in fun is what he’d advise anyone making a new IP today. Everything else, he says, from licensing to platform strategy, is a natural consequence of, and should come after, getting that emotional core right first.

Last year's Subway Surfers x Brawl Stars crossover wasn't just a skin swap. It was, by Mathias's account, the biggest activation in mobile gaming history, and one born out of genuine studio-to-studio admiration rather than a media buy. The result speaks for itself: September is typically the softest month of the year for mobile games, as players return to school and work, but as Mathias puts it, "this was the best September we've ever had."

The harder problem was what came next. A crossover spike is easy; retention is not. SYBO's answer was to study what made the Brawl Stars-flavoured "showdown" mode resonate, then rebuild that player behaviour into the core Subway Surfers experience once the collaboration ended, turning a four-week spike into players who stuck around for the main game.

Every IP owner eventually faces the same conundrum: the point where each new addition to the franchise exists purely to be monetised rather than to deepen the story. Mathias draws the line there explicitly, describing SYBO's licensing philosophy as wanting to make "products you would also give to your own kid."

There was another lesson SYBO learned as they explored licensing: that pushing only premium merchandise quietly excludes fans who can't afford it, in a game explicitly built to be accessible to everyone. The result is a self-imposed discipline: expansion has to earn its place in the DNA of the IP, not just its balance sheet.

SYBO's relationship with user-generated content is one to emulate. Mathias is unambiguous that once fans start remixing characters, choreographing dance trends, or turning the game into playground exercise routines, the studio has no real control over where that goes, but it doesn't try to claw it back.

As he puts it, "the biggest influence we have is what we share." It's a strategy built on trust that the community will protect the brand's DNA better than heavy-handed guardrails would. And he recognises that as the holder of the IP, SYBO has the power to amplify the UGC that aligns with their values. It creates an ecosystem where fans know that if they do something genuinely innovative, interesting, and aligned with what Subway Surfers stands for, they can become part of the franchise itself.

Mathias credits this philosophy with keeping Subway Surfers feeling alive and cool rather than corporate.

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