Fanatics at a glance
  • Founded: 1995 as Football Fanatics near Jacksonville, Florida; rebuilt into today's company by CEO Michael Rubin after he sold GSI Commerce to eBay in 2011.
  • Scale: roughly 22,000 employees, 80+ offices worldwide, and around $13 billion in expected 2026 revenue.
  • Ownership: still a private company; last confirmed valuation around $31 billion, with investors including SoftBank, Silver Lake, Fidelity — and, notably, several of the leagues it partners with.
  • Three segments: Fanatics Commerce (licensed merchandise, ~54% of revenue), Fanatics Collectibles (trading cards, memorabilia, auctions) and Fanatics Betting & Gaming (~12% of revenue).
  • Cards: owns Topps, and holds the exclusive trading-card license for MLB/MLBPA, NBA/NBPA and NFL/NFLPA, plus England's FA and (from 2031) FIFA.

If you've bought a pack of cards in the last few years, chances are Fanatics was somewhere in the supply chain — as the manufacturer, the license holder, or the marketplace you sold on afterward. The name shows up constantly in the hobby right now precisely because Fanatics has spent the last five years buying, licensing and building its way into nearly every layer of the sports collectibles business at once. This is a plain breakdown of what the company actually is, how it got here, and why it matters if you collect or sell cards.

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From a Jacksonville apparel shop to a $13B platform

Fanatics traces its roots to 1995, when brothers Alan and Mitch Trager opened Football Fanatics, a sports apparel shop near Jacksonville, Florida. The company most people mean today by "Fanatics" was effectively rebuilt by Michael Rubin, who made his fortune founding GSI Commerce and selling it to eBay for $2.4 billion in 2011. As part of that deal, Rubin personally paid $500 million to buy back three assets eBay didn't want — Fanatics, Rue La La and ShopRunner — and built Fanatics into the platform it is now. He remains founder and CEO.

The company has grown fast: roughly 22,000 employees, more than 80 offices globally, and an expected $13 billion in revenue for 2026. It's still privately held — there's no Fanatics stock to buy — with a last confirmed valuation around $31 billion from a December 2022 funding round. Its investor list is unusual for a sports company: alongside SoftBank, Silver Lake and Fidelity, several of the leagues Fanatics partners with — the NFL, MLB, NHL, MLS and the NFLPA — hold actual equity stakes.

The three businesses inside Fanatics

Fanatics operates across three main segments, and only one of them is the trading card business collectors usually think of:

  • Fanatics Commerce — the original business and still the biggest slice of revenue (~54%). It runs the official e-commerce sites for 900+ teams, leagues and colleges, and manufactures the licensed jerseys, hats and merchandise sold on them.
  • Fanatics Collectibles — trading cards, memorabilia and collectibles auctions. This is the piece that matters to CardPulse readers, and it's covered in detail below.
  • Fanatics Betting & Gaming — a sportsbook live in 24 states, the Fanatics Casino iGaming app, and Fanatics Markets, a prediction-market product — around 12% of company revenue, built on Fanatics' database of 100M+ sports fans.

How Fanatics ended up owning Topps

Fanatics Collectibles launched in 2021, the same year Fanatics won exclusive future trading-card rights from MLB and the MLBPA. That deal effectively ended Topps' 70-year run as MLB's default card partner and collapsed Topps' pending SPAC merger, since MLB cards were the crown jewel of Topps' business. Rather than let a competitor pick up the pieces, Fanatics acquired Topps' trading card and entertainment business outright for roughly $500 million in January 2022 (Topps' separate confectionery/candy business was spun off on its own). Since then, Topps has operated as Fanatics Collectibles' card-manufacturing arm — when you see "Topps" on a pack today, you're buying a Fanatics product.

The license sweep: MLB, NBA, NFL — and now soccer

Since that first MLB win, Fanatics has methodically taken the exclusive trading-card license away from its main rival, Panini, sport by sport. The NBA/NBPA license moved to Fanatics/Topps in October 2025, ending Panini's run and forcing its 2025-26 Donruss basketball into what collectors now call Panini's "unlicensed era" — no team logos, just player names and cities. The NFL/NFLPA license followed with a multi-year deal that returned Topps to football card production for the first time since 2016. Fanatics signed a similar exclusive deal with England's Football Association in May 2026, and — in the biggest single move yet — FIFA announced on May 7, 2026 that Fanatics/Topps takes over World Cup trading cards, stickers and trading card games from 2031, ending Panini's 60-year run as the World Cup's collectibles partner. Between MLB, NBA, NFL, the FA and the incoming FIFA deal, Fanatics now controls the trading-card license for most of the sports a European collector is likely to care about.

Beyond cards: Fanatics Collect, Fanatics Live and Candy Digital

Fanatics Collectibles isn't just Topps. In May 2023 it acquired PWCC Marketplace, a major sports-collectibles auction house, and rebranded it as Fanatics Collect in July 2024 — a direct alternative to eBay and Cardmarket for high-end graded singles. In July 2023, Fanatics launched Fanatics Live, a live-commerce app for card breaks and creator-hosted shopping events, competing directly with Whatnot (see our Whatnot vs Fanatics Collect comparison). Rubin also co-founded Candy Digital in 2021 with Mike Novogratz and Gary Vaynerchuk, a separate NFT/digital-collectibles venture distinct from the physical card business. Most recently, Fanatics launched Fanatics Studios, a media and entertainment joint venture with OBB Media announced in January 2026 — a sign the company sees itself as a broader sports-fan platform, not just a card manufacturer.

Why this matters if you collect cards

For collectors, the practical effect of Fanatics' expansion is that the hobby is consolidating around one company's product design language. Topps' Chrome-style refractors, on-card autographs and jersey-patch programs are replacing Panini's sticker-and-Prizm approach across sport after sport — our breakdown of the FIFA deal covers exactly what that shift looks like for World Cup collecting from 2031. It also means more of the buying, selling and grading conversation happens on Fanatics-owned surfaces — Fanatics Collect for auctions, Fanatics Live for breaks — alongside the marketplaces Europeans already use, like Cardmarket, eBay and Wallapop.

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