NEWSLETTER
Major baseball-adjacent news today, as multiple reports indicate that, after Topps and Panini’s licenses with the MLB Players Association expire next year, the MLBPA and MLB will exclusively license the right to make baseball cards to a new company owned by Fanatics.
The reports:
NEWS: In what appears to be the beginning of a seismic shift in the trading card industry, MLB and the MLBPA are entering into exclusive agreements with a new company controlled by Fanatics to produce cards. They will not renew their deals with Topps.https://t.co/nJJVPq91ZB
— Jared Diamond (@jareddiamond) August 19, 2021
This is a huge deal in the collectible world: The MLBPA and MLB struck an agreement with Fanatics to be the exclusive baseball-card licensee for the sport, pushing Topps out of the business in the coming years. More from @DanHajducky, a hobby must-follow: https://t.co/gIQvXDjCLX
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 19, 2021
Topps has been the exclusive MLB licensee for baseball cards since 2009 (which means they are the only cards that can show team logos at present), and to say that this deal would be a major blow to them is an understatement. With card collecting seeing a huge boom in the last two years, it’s concerning to me that MLB/MLBPA would opt to go the exclusive route, but apparently the money is going to be significant. That is all the more the case since the deal gets the exclusive rights from both MLB and the players.
The ESPN report indicates that the deal is more than 10 times larger than any other deal the league or players have agreed to in this space, and the WSJ report indicates that MLB and the MLBPA, as well as the NFL and NBA players unions, will have a stake in the new company.
The market has kinda been Topps-only for a long time, so I guess that part – the one size fits all – won’t change. But obviously the provider will, and Topps’ history with baseball cards is obviously decades and decades old. It’s a little sad.
Fanatics-backed Candy Digital is already the exclusive holder of MLB NFT rights (i.e., digital collectibles). So it makes sense that they would want an exclusive on the physical cards, too. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if, eventually, the physical card company and the NFT company are viewed as the same entity for the public (i.e., you buy a pack of cards and it also comes with one NFT that you “open” on your phone).
Oh, also a possibility? The yet-to-be-named new company backed by Fanatics could conceivably wind up … being Topps, right? Like, couldn’t Fanatics, now that it has secured these exclusive licenses, attempt to buy Topps? Just thinking out loud. That’s gotta be a valuable brand …
The fallout from this new deal is going to be considerable, again, especially considering how hot baseball cards have become once again. I haven’t gotten back into it myself since I was a kid, but I see friends – and their kids – getting WAY back into it. I wonder what they think about this news.
Note: Bleacher Nation has an advertising relationship with Fanatics, whereby we may receive a portion of the proceeds from sales when people click on Fanatics links here at BN.
