Sports Memorabilia Biz Braces for Change As Fanatics Buys Topps for $500M

Less than six months after iconic sports trading card company Topps aborted plans to launch a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) after losing its 70-year licensing franchise with Major League Baseball to apparel and branding upstart Fanatics, the two rivals are back in the news again — only this time as partners.

Read more: Topps’ Blank Check Merger Plan Strikes Out

According to a press release, privately-held New York-based apparel, hat and memorabilia giant Fanatics has completed the acquisition, adding the humbled playing card company to its growing stable of brands.

Domination in the Digital Era

The addition of Topps is likely to accelerate and solidify Fanatics’ entry into — and domination of — the aging sports playing card category, resulting in what The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) referred to as “dramatic upheaval” in an industry that has been largely unchanged for decades. It also follows recent deals struck with the players’ unions for professional football and basketball, as well as a league-level deal with the NBA.

To be sure, the halcyon days of getting a stale piece of chewing gum inside a package of baseball or football cards remains a fond memory for millions of middle-aged sports fans, many of whom still hang on to boxes of their childhood collections that have been stored away and untouched for years.

For many amateur collectors, one of the great obstacles that stands in the way of either dispersing or disposing of these 30-, 40- or more than 50-year-old card collections is the mystery surrounding what they may actually be worth. Although pristine rare cards are regularly valued, bought and sold for millions of dollars, with many, many others selling for either hundreds or thousands of dollars in stores and online in places such as eBay, transactions are fraught with risk, uncertainty and counterfeiting — especially when signatures and game balls are involved.

To that point, Fanatics launched its Candy Digital unit last year to authenticate sports memorabilia and, in turn, validate valuations.

On its website, Fanatics describes Candy as a “next generation digital collectibles company that brings together world class digital artists, designers and technologists to develop a broad range of official NFTs [nonfungible tokens].”

Fanatics has made no secret that it’s “just getting started” in what it calls “fandom reimagined” alongside its plans to “change the world” of sports collectibles. While that script is still being written, its growing portfolio of digital and real-life products ranging from hats to shirts to gear and trading cards has already left it in a powerful position.

What comes next in terms of innovation and scale is anybody’s guess, but judging from Fanatics’ past and present track record of expansion and diversification, it is safe to assume that the answer will be more rather than less.