Cricket is the second most popular sport globally, after football/soccer, with an audience of more than 2.5 billion across 180 countries. It is particularly strong in South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Afghanistan, and especially India); Australia and New Zealand; England (the birthplace of the sport); the West Indies including Trinidad and Tobago; South […]
Tag Archives | Fanatics
Two-Sport Athletic Deals
With the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup Finals in progress, WWE, the wrestling entertainment brand, announced last week that it was creating an officially licensed legacy championship belt for the winning team. The belt, like those given to winners of wrestling events, highlights the Stanley Cup in the center, where the WWE logo usually resides, […]
The Peak Celebrity Era
Taylor Swift has had an outsized influence on pop culture and commerce in 2023 and 2024, putting her mark on music sales, NFL ratings, sales of official and unofficial merchandise, and more. While Swift is an anomaly in the breadth and depth of her current dominance, her situation nevertheless makes an interesting case study on […]
Finding Consumers Where They Work or Play
This past September, J.C. Penney paired with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products to release women’s and men’s sweaters, dresses, shirts and tops, jackets, tote bags, and other apparel and accessories tied to the TV series Abbott Elementary. The collection was designed specifically for teachers, emphasizing comfort and affordability as well as a casual-but-professional style. […]
Full Court Press for K-pop and Sports
The connections between K-pop stars and sports have strengthened over the past few years, most typically taking the form of concerts during matches, promotional partnerships and brand ambassadorships, content agreements, and the like. The growing ties have also led to the emergence of a handful of collaborative merchandise initiatives, some focused on Asia and others […]
Quality Time
While consumers are divided on many issues, one thing on which almost all can agree is that they expect their licensed products to have a level of quality commensurate with the price. Lately, several marketers have been dealing with fan blowback—magnified on social media—because their products or plans, at least according to some of their […]
Picking Up the Pace
The governing bodies that oversee professional racing across a variety of vehicles and types, along with other racing-related properties, have been active on the consumer products front since the beginning of 2022. Many have signed new licensing deals (especially in gaming, toys, and collectibles), extended existing agreements, launched new product lines, retained new agents, and/or […]
Wrestling Groups Pin Down New Deals
Last week WWE announced a multifaceted partnership with Fanatics. This is just the latest in a string of initiatives that have surfaced in the past year or so involving wrestling-related IP. Properties and brands at the forefront include: WWE. Its long-term, global deal with Fanatics encompasses e-commerce (including a reintroduction of the WWE Shop); licensed […]
NIL Service Providers in the News
A lot has happened since collegiate athletes and other students gained the right to commercially exploit their own names, images, and likenesses (NIL) nine months ago, on July 1, 2021. For one thing, a variety of services and platforms—marketplaces, group licensing and marketing agencies, educational and back-end resource providers, and the like—have been formed to […]
Trading Card Transformations
The trading card industry has been experiencing a number of changes this year, from skyrocketing interest in collecting, to decades-long licensing agreements changing hands, to the emergence of new opportunities including non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and collegiate name, image, and likeness (NIL) rights. Some of the key trends to watch: A pandemic-fueled rise in popularity. Interest […]