With its third fan convention, Fanatics wants to win the summer in sports
Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. (Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.)
Name-dropped today: Michael Rubin, Karolína Muchová, LeBron James, Fandango, Gianni Infantino, AJ Dybantsa, Neeru and Vinod Khosla, Alexia Putellas, Joe Dean, Shohei Ohtani, Madonna and more. Let’s go:
Driving the Conversation
Fanatics’ plan to own summer
Fanatics Fest has become such a summer sports institution that it’s hard to believe the gathering only launched two summers ago.
What started as a clever live-event marketing demonstration by a company with seismic aspirations has turned into a tentpole sports-business day of the year — part collectibles convention, part celebrity showcase, part sports-exec confab, part flex by CEO Michael Rubin and his multi-pronged conglomerate.
Starting tomorrow in New York, taking over the Javits Convention Center for the next couple of days, Fanatics Fest will feature the full weight of one of the most ambitious brands in sports:
• Four hundred athletes and celebrities participate (including LeBron, Tom Brady, Serena, Kevin Hart). News might be broken (KD’s trade to the Rockets last year went from Twitter to his Fest panel in real time). Partner leagues crow. Sponsors showcase. Collectors spend.
• The event went from 70,000 people in 2024 to an expected 200,000 this weekend, spreading out over 1 million square feet of convention space. They’re paying $240 for four-day passes, roughly $70 for a single-day pass.
• Friday, it will host FIFA’s World Cup final news conference. LeBron may or may not have something to say about his future there. Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart will tape a live podcast that might double as a quasi-religious revival. Brady and Novak Djokovic will compete with fans over who can do the most scintillating, WWE-style arena entrance.
Fanatics started as a website to buy your team’s jersey. But its collectibles division took the industry by storm: It bought venerable Topps. It launched a live-shopping platform. Meanwhile, the parent company has this events division, a nascent content studio and, of course, a betting/predictions platform.
If you’re a fan spending money on sports — whether that’s buying a rookie’s jersey or breaking a card pack or attending a live podcast taping or making a bet — Fanatics wants to be part of that transaction.
Quadrennially, the Olympics and the World Cup take their places as the biggest summer events in sports. Fanatics Fest isn’t that, obviously, but the company is clearly investing to put itself perennially in the summer conversation.
Get Caught Up
Big talkers from the sports business industry:
World Cup crescendo: This World Cup has received intense attention from U.S. TV viewers tuning in to Fox or Telemundo. Spain’s win over tourney favorite France yesterday won’t top U.S.-Belgium, but it should easily clear the record for most-watched English-language World Cup semifinal in U.S. TV history. Today, England-Argentina will top that number.
World Cup expanding to 64 teams? (So interesting to me that I dedicated the entire “What I’m Wondering” section to it below! Keep reading!)
Netflix’s Home Run Derby: I’ll point you to Andrew Marchand’s review, but the gist is that the beginning was kind of a swing and a miss and the ending was absolutely awesome.
MLB All-Star Break: Latest on the labor front. “Manfred and Meyer again spent a lot of time on Tuesday on the state of competitive balance in the sport. Manfred thinks it’s broken, Meyer doesn’t.” — Evan Drellich, with a full analysis
Seahawks sold for $9.6B: That’s way up from the Commanders’ sale for a then-NFL-record $6B three years ago and not quite the $10B for the Lakers, but I think $10B is the new floor for NFL team sales. (Not that NFL owners are itching to sell.)
Once the sale is approved by the league, Neeru Khosla will be the controlling owner. The Khosla family, including her husband Vinod and son Neal, are part-owners of the San Francisco 49ers, ownership they will have to divest in order to buy the Seahawks.
Wimbledon in review: Karolína Muchová after a loss to Linda Nosková: “It’s really tough to find any words, but I’ll start with Linda. My ex-friend.”
My colleague Ava Wallace on that quote: “Muchová’s ability to find humor through her tears after losing the Wimbledon final to friend and fellow Czech Nosková was impressive — and the line was perfectly delivered.”
Complete superlatives from our team on the ground.
What next for LeBron? Will he announce his decision on his agent’s podcast? (Spoiler: No. But, as noted, keeping an eye on his live session at Fanatics Fest …)
The quirkiest live-sports TV deal yet? Bundesliga is moving from ESPN (well, old ESPN+) to Versant, which is airing games on USA Network (normal) and … Fandango??? (Say this for them: You won’t need an additional subscription to watch top-tier German soccer games on Fandango.)
Related: Asli Pelit explains how the NWSL layered in a platform offering free access to fans among their half-dozen media partners.
Other current obsessions: Erling Haaland’s taxidermy raccoon … LPGA fashion innovation … AJ Dybantsa, newest NBA superstar … Bryce Harper versus FanDuel … the soccer ball that went to space …
What I’m Wondering
64-team World Cup: Madness or reasonable?
Self-admittedly, I’m a playoff maximalist. U.S. sports’ playoff expansion has overwhelmingly been net-positive, despite detractors across every league claiming that this time it will definitely ruin the sport.
Much to the chagrin of doubters, the expanded 48-team World Cup has been a success, although a trial balloon of increasing it to 64 teams in 2030 has triggered new hand-wringing, despite evidence (i.e., Cape Verde) it would likely work out fine.
Is going from 48 to 64 so absurd? If your comp is U.S. pro leagues, not at all:
NBA (16*/30): 53% of the league
WNBA (8/15): 53%
NHL (16/32): 50%
NFL (14/32): 44%
MLB (12/30): 40%
World Cup (64/211): 30%
CBB (76**/361): 21%
CFB (12***/138): 9%
* The NBA is 20/30 (60 percent of the league) if you count the four “play-in” teams with chances to win their way into the standard playoff bracket.
** New for March Madness in 2027, up from 68, in place since 2011.
*** If the CFP expands to 16 teams, it’ll be 12 percent of FBS. If 24, 17 percent. Even if it went to 32 (can you imagine that outcry?), that’s only 23 percent.
Now, is there a clear financial incentive for FIFA to increase the World Cup participants? Absolutely: more teams ➡️ more games ➡️ more TV/ticket/sponsor inventory ➡️ more revenue. That has worked out pretty well for other leagues.
As we saw this year: “expanded World Cup” doesn’t mean “diluted World Cup.”
In this case, more teams invited to the party seems to only make the party that much more fun for all involved.
Coming in next week’s MoneyCall: more World Cup lessons learned.
Grab Bag
⚡Round: World Cup business
😬 Carli Lloyd on the USMNT letdown
🫣 What next for Brand Pulisic?
💰Deep dive on FIFA’s finances
🐌 Vozinha x biological immortality
Data Points
• $450: What FIFA was asking for tiny swatches of the World Cup final field, available for purchase. (Don’t bother looking. They sold out.)
• $15: The discounted cost to get into tonight’s Queens Classic between Gotham FC and the Washington Spirit at Citi Field, for the 4,000 fans lucky enough to snag the tickets as part of Gotham and NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s effort to create additional affordable live sports experiences for fans. (8 p.m. ET, ESPN.)
• $3.365 million: The new record price for a Shohei Ohtani rookie card. (Related: Will Maradona’s “Hand of God” ball sell for $10 million?)
Name to Know: Alexia Putellas
The best women’s footballer in the world is coming to the WSL, a coup for London City Lionesses (and Washington Spirit) owner Michele Kang and arguably an even bigger one for the league itself. (Self-servingly, the biggest coup of all? Putellas came to The Athletic’s NYC offices to do an exclusive interview about her decision.)
One more: Joe Dean, the former truck driver who claimed the final spot at The Open Championship, beating out 11 other competitors in the Last Chance Qualifier. Impossible not to keep him on the radar as a rooting interest as things start tomorrow.
OK, a few more: BTS, Madonna, Shakira and Justin Bieber, who are headlining the World Cup final halftime show this weekend, which will unusually expand the usual halftime.
Last one: NHL Golden Knights owner Bill Foley would very much like to make this list as the new owner of the NBA’s upcoming expansion franchise in Las Vegas. He talked with Mike Vorkunov about the situation.
Explainer: ‘Laying out’
Had so much fun working on this piece last week with Andrew Marchand, Rebecca Tauber and Ben Burrows: Have you noticed that little pause by the Fox announcers after World Cup goals, letting the fan cheering carry the visuals, rather than talking over them?
That’s a U.S. TV technique called “laying out,” and we consulted with all-time great Joe Buck and 2026 World Cup Fox commentator Derek Rae (who called the Argentina-Egypt game) for insight.
Are we contractually obligated here to cut to FIFA honcho Gianni Infantino? No. But this is an amazing Adam Crafton explainer of why he always ends up on TV before that first hydration break. Back to the newsletter …
Fan Survey: NHL
What do you think of gambling’s presence in hockey? Where should the league expand? What would you do if you were commissioner for a day? Take the survey.
(Speaking of fan empowerment: How about that fan revolt that got EA to abandon microtransactions in the new CFB 27 video game?)
Beat Dan in Connections: Sports Edition
Puzzle No. 660
Dan’s time: 00:37
Try the game here!
Worth Your Time
Great business-adjacent reads for your downtime or commute:
The youth-sports industry is a recurring object of fascination here (and for many, many parents who are participating in it). So Henry Bushnell’s dive into the U.S. youth soccer system and the topic of “pay to play” as a limiting factor on the US’s bigger global ambitions for soccer success is a must-read.
One more:
• Fileteado porteño: The iconic art form that inspired Argentina’s World Cup semifinal shirt.
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