Fanatics Controls the Product. TikTok Controls the Storefront. A New Antitrust Suit Says That Combination Shut Rivals Out.

Case Analysis | September 12, 2026

Being big is not an antitrust violation.

Owning valuable licenses is not an antitrust violation. Operating a dominant online platform is not an antitrust violation. Selling your own products through that platform is not necessarily an antitrust violation either.

The harder question is what happens when companies controlling different layers of a market allegedly coordinate to determine who gets access to both the product and the customers.

That is the theory at the center of a new federal lawsuit against Fanatics, TikTok, ByteDance, and related entities.

On September 10, 2026, MVP Breaks and related plaintiffs filed an antitrust action in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California alleging that Fanatics and TikTok participated in a coordinated scheme to push independent livestream sports-memorabilia “breakers” off TikTok—or suppress their reach—unless they agreed to source and sell Fanatics products. The case is MVP Breaks PLLC et al. v. TikTok Inc. et al., No. 2:26-cv-10202.

Those are allegations, not findings.

No judge has decided whether an agreement existed. No court has found that Fanatics possesses monopoly power in the market MVP alleges. No court has determined that TikTok suppressed anyone at Fanatics’ request. And no court has held that any exclusivity arrangement unlawfully foreclosed competition.

But the lawsuit matters because it attacks something bigger than a sports-card company getting large.

It attacks the collectibles stack.

Fanatics increasingly operates across licensing, manufacturing, distribution, retail, livestream breaking, marketplaces, authentication, events, and direct-to-consumer sales. TikTok supplies something Fanatics cannot manufacture: enormous consumer attention and a livestream-commerce platform where independent breakers can find customers in real time.

The plaintiffs’ theory, stripped to its core, is therefore not: Fanatics became too successful.

It is: Fanatics allegedly used its position in sports collectibles together with TikTok’s control over a critical sales channel to make independent competition harder unless sellers joined Fanatics’ ecosystem.

That distinction will decide whether this case becomes consequential antitrust litigation—or another business dispute wearing an antitrust jersey.

Modern sports collecting is no longer just a collector walking into a hobby shop and buying a box of cards.

“Breakers” buy boxes, cases, cards, signed helmets, jerseys, or other collectibles and sell customers interests in what will be opened during a livestream. A customer might buy the Bengals, for example, and receive Cincinnati-related items pulled during the break. Other formats allocate players, divisions, teams, or random slots.

The entertainment is part of the product.

So is the platform.

A successful breaker does not merely need inventory. It needs viewers, followers, payment infrastructure, livestream functionality, recommendation algorithms, and enough platform visibility to convert an audience into buyers.

MVP itself continues to sell sports-memorabilia break products through TikTok Shop, where its store has accumulated a substantial following and sales history.

That matters because this lawsuit sits at the intersection of two potential bottlenecks.

One is access to desirable licensed sports products.

The other is access to the audience that buys them.

Fanatics’ role in sports collectibles is no longer peripheral.

The company acquired Topps in 2022 after securing long-term trading-card rights from major leagues and players associations. In April 2026, Fanatics Collectibles, the NFL, and the NFLPA announced that Topps had become the official exclusive NFL and NFLPA trading-card licensee, with rights to use league and team branding, uniforms, names, logos, and player group rights.

Fanatics also operates Fanatics Live, its own livestream commerce platform for breaking and collectibles.

That does not automatically create monopoly power.

And there is an important distinction between trading cards and the much broader universe of sports memorabilia. An exclusive license to manufacture officially licensed NFL trading cards does not necessarily mean Fanatics possesses exclusive rights to every signed helmet, jersey, photograph, repack product, authenticated collectible, or previously sold item in secondary commerce.

That distinction may become extremely important here.

The plaintiffs reportedly allege that independent sellers were banned or suppressed unless they agreed to sell Fanatics products exclusively.

Related breaker lawsuits pending in the same federal district go further. In one, Quad City Breaks operator David Skalsky alleges TikTok representatives tied account restoration to an exclusive Fanatics relationship. Another recently filed case by Dorm Dudes alleges bans, demonetization, and algorithmic suppression connected to demands that it move away from competing products. Those allegations also remain unproven.

So MVP’s filing is beginning to look less like an isolated grievance and more like part of a developing litigation theory.

That point deserves emphasis because the procedural posture changes everything.

This is a complaint.

The court has not held that the alleged arrangement existed, much less that it violated Sections 1 or 2 of the Sherman Act.

At this stage, the plaintiffs have placed their theory on the board. The defendants will now have opportunities to attack the legal sufficiency of that theory before meaningful discovery occurs.

And there are several obvious pressure points.

The first may not even be antitrust law.

TikTok’s current U.S. Seller Terms contain a dispute-resolution provision directing U.S. seller disputes to the arbitration agreement in TikTok’s Commercial Terms. TikTok’s current campaign terms similarly contain a broad agreement requiring individual arbitration of claims arising from a participant’s relationship with TikTok.

That does not establish that MVP’s claims must be arbitrated.

The relevant questions would include which terms MVP actually accepted, when it accepted them, whether an applicable agreement existed during the challenged conduct, whether the antitrust claims fall within its scope, whether Fanatics can invoke any third-party-beneficiary language, and whether any challenge to arbitrability belongs to a judge or arbitrator.

But strategically, this is the kind of threshold issue defendants often attack first.

The most important antitrust case in sports collectibles could initially become an arbitration case.

If it survives that stage, the real antitrust fight begins.

This is probably the most important distinction in the entire case.

Antitrust law protects competition, not individual competitors.

A breaker can lose its account, lose millions of dollars in sales, lose customers, and even go out of business without necessarily proving an antitrust violation.

To transform those losses into antitrust injury, plaintiffs ordinarily need to connect them to a broader competitive harm: fewer independent sellers, less output, higher prices, diminished consumer choice, reduced innovation, greater barriers to entry, or some other injury flowing from the suppression of competition itself.

That is why the plaintiffs’ evidence cannot stop with:

TikTok hurt us.

It needs to reach:

The alleged Fanatics–TikTok arrangement harmed the competitive process.

That distinction will shape everything from pleading to experts to discovery.

Nearly every serious monopolization or foreclosure case eventually runs into the same question:

What exactly are we measuring?

Antitrust market definition asks what products consumers realistically treat as substitutes and where effective competition occurs. The government’s own framework emphasizes reasonable interchangeability, actual competitive conditions, customer substitution, and evidence of market power.

That sounds academic until you apply it here.

Is the relevant market:

Each formulation dramatically changes the case.

A narrow TikTok-centered market makes the alleged exclusion look more powerful. But Fanatics and TikTok can argue that the definition is artificially cramped if independent breakers can reach customers through Fanatics Live, Whatnot, eBay, their own websites, physical hobby stores, or other social platforms.

A broader collectibles market solves that problem—but potentially makes it harder to show market power or substantial foreclosure.

That tension is not incidental.

It may be the case.

The phrase “exclusive dealing” sounds sinister.

Antitrust law does not treat it that way.

Manufacturers and distributors commonly enter exclusive arrangements because they can encourage investment, prevent free riding, improve marketing, guarantee supply, and give businesses reasons to devote resources to a particular brand. The FTC expressly recognizes that exclusive dealing is generally lawful and often procompetitive.

The problem arises when exclusivity substantially forecloses competitors from the market.

The Ninth Circuit made that especially clear in two recent decisions.

In Key v. Qualcomm, the court reiterated that exclusive dealing is assessed under the rule of reason and ordinarily becomes actionable only when the arrangement significantly forecloses competitors and causes antitrust injury.

Even more relevant is the Ninth Circuit’s 2025 decision in CoStar Group v. Commercial Real Estate Exchange (CREXi). The court explained that exclusive agreements become anticompetitive when they shut rivals out of enough of the market that competitors cannot obtain a meaningful foothold. A firm with monopoly power that uses exclusive agreements to foreclose rivals can potentially implicate both Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.

That framework maps unusually well onto MVP’s allegations.

The plaintiffs therefore need to show not simply that TikTok preferred Fanatics sellers, but that the alleged arrangement closed off enough economically meaningful distribution to impair competition.

That requires evidence.

How important is TikTok to breakers?

How much breaking commerce occurs there?

How successfully can a banned breaker move an existing audience elsewhere?

Does the algorithm create network effects that make an established TikTok following difficult to reproduce?

How much business migrated to Fanatics products or Fanatics-controlled channels?

Were rival suppliers actually denied an efficient route to customers?

Those questions are likely to matter far more than colorful allegations that a seller was “shadow banned.”

Traditional exclusive-dealing cases often involve a manufacturer locking up distributors.

Here, the alleged arrangement is different.

TikTok does not merely distribute products. It distributes attention.

Its recommendation system determines what users encounter. A seller can technically remain online while becoming practically invisible if its content stops reaching viewers.

That creates a modern antitrust problem courts increasingly encounter in platform markets: exclusion does not always require physically preventing someone from selling.

It can occur through ranking, discoverability, eligibility, account privileges, payment access, livestream reach, or algorithmic distribution.

The Justice Department and FTC now expressly recognize that competition involving multi-sided platforms can occur between platforms, on a platform, and against firms attempting to displace the platform itself.

And Epic Games v. Apple demonstrated how platform rules can become antitrust restraints when control over distribution interacts with market power—while also showing how difficult those cases are for plaintiffs to win. The Ninth Circuit upheld Apple against Epic’s federal Sherman Act theories despite recognizing meaningful market power and competitive harms in parts of Apple’s ecosystem.

That should temper any assumption that MVP’s theory is easy.

It is not.

Possibly—but that theory is trickier than it first appears.

A conventional tying claim says, essentially:

If you want Product A, you must also buy Product B.

Applied here, the theory might be that TikTok access or meaningful TikTok Shop distribution was conditioned on sourcing or selling Fanatics merchandise.

But tying requires more than two things appearing in the same arrangement. Plaintiffs generally must establish distinct products, market power in the tying product, coercion, and a sufficiently meaningful volume of commerce in the tied product.

The Ninth Circuit’s Epic decision illustrates both the power and difficulty of that framework. It recognized that a firm with market power can potentially force contracting partners to accept conditions they would not accept in a competitive market, but it rejected Epic’s ultimate federal tying theory.

Here, defining the supposed “tying product” could be awkward.

Is it TikTok account access?

TikTok Shop selling privileges?

Algorithmic visibility?

Livestream distribution?

Those questions are one reason the alleged conduct may fit more naturally as exclusive dealing or vertical foreclosure than classic tying.

A monopolization claim requires more.

The plaintiffs would need to prove monopoly power in a properly defined relevant market and exclusionary conduct used to acquire or maintain that power.

Fanatics’ scale alone is not enough.

Antitrust law expressly distinguishes unlawful monopoly maintenance from dominance achieved through superior products, business acumen, innovation, or historic accident.

That puts enormous pressure on the plaintiffs’ market definition.

Fanatics unquestionably has extraordinarily valuable sports rights. Its Topps business now holds the NFL and NFLPA’s exclusive trading-card license, and its broader portfolio reaches numerous major sports properties.

But monopoly power is market-specific.

The plaintiffs cannot simply point to Fanatics’ overall sports empire and say: monopoly.

They need to establish power over the particular market in which the alleged exclusion occurred.

The new breaker litigation does not arise in a vacuum.

Panini previously sued Fanatics over an alleged campaign to dominate major professional sports trading cards through exclusive licensing, acquisitions, control over a crucial printer, pressure on retailers and breakers, and other allegedly exclusionary conduct.

In March 2025, Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain of the Southern District of New York allowed substantial portions of Panini’s antitrust case to survive a motion to dismiss. Among other things, the court found plausible at the pleading stage Panini’s allegations that certain long-term exclusive licensing arrangements could substantially restrict access to the relevant trading-card market.

That ruling does not establish that Fanatics violated antitrust law.

It involved a different plaintiff, different transactions, different markets, and different alleged restraints.

But the comparison is useful.

Panini attacked upstream control: league and player licenses, manufacturing capacity, and access necessary to create competing cards.

The breaker cases attack alleged downstream control: who can distribute, sell, and reach customers.

Put the theories together and the concern becomes vertical:

What happens if one company becomes increasingly powerful at multiple points from the creation of a licensed collectible to the moment a fan buys it?

Again, vertical integration is not itself illegal.

It can lower costs and make products better.

The antitrust question is whether control at one layer is used to prevent competition at another.

Section 1 of the Sherman Act requires concerted conduct.

Fanatics cannot conspire with TikTok merely because both companies independently made decisions that hurt the same seller.

The plaintiffs need facts supporting a plausible agreement.

That makes communications potentially decisive.

If discovery eventually produces evidence showing TikTok personnel saying, in substance, “your account returns when you sign with Fanatics,” that is very different from TikTok independently enforcing intellectual-property or marketplace rules while Fanatics independently marketed exclusivity.

Related breaker litigation already alleges communications of that character. Skalsky claims a TikTok representative told him his account could be reinstated if he signed an exclusive agreement with Fanatics. Again, that claim is an allegation and has not been adjudicated.

If MVP possesses comparable communications, the Section 1 theory becomes more concrete.

If it does not, pleading an actual conspiracy could be considerably harder.

The strongest defense is not simply that Fanatics did nothing wrong.

It is that the plaintiffs may be confusing commercial disappointment with competitive harm.

TikTok will likely argue that it has legitimate reasons to police sellers, enforce authenticity requirements, protect intellectual-property rights, manage marketplace quality, and decide who can participate in TikTok Shop.

Fanatics can argue that leagues are entitled to license their intellectual property exclusively, that exclusive distribution arrangements are routine, and that it competes aggressively because it has built a better integrated product—not because it unlawfully blocks rivals.

Both companies can point to alternative platforms and sellers as evidence that competition remains healthy.

And even if some alleged practices look heavy-handed, defendants can argue that antitrust law does not exist to guarantee an independent seller access to somebody else’s platform.

That is a serious argument.

The plaintiffs’ answer will have to be that TikTok was not merely exercising ordinary platform discretion. They must show that platform power was allegedly deployed as part of an arrangement that protected or extended Fanatics’ market position and materially foreclosed competing sellers or products.

That is a much harder case—but also a much more consequential one.

Nothing in the complaint establishes that:

All of that remains to be litigated.

This is exactly why the difference between a complaint and a decision matters.

The complaint tells us the plaintiffs’ theory.

The next stage tells us whether that theory is legally sufficient.

The first major battle should be procedural.

TikTok may invoke arbitration. The defendants may seek dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6). Related-case proceedings could become important because multiple breaker suits are now advancing similar theories in the same federal district.

If the cases survive those threshold challenges, discovery becomes unusually consequential.

The most important evidence would likely include communications among TikTok, Fanatics, distributors, and sellers; internal marketplace policies; records of seller bans and reinstatements; any exclusivity requirements; algorithmic treatment of affected accounts; Fanatics product-distribution data; alternative-platform sales data; and economic evidence establishing how much of the relevant market the alleged arrangement actually foreclosed.

That last category may ultimately determine the outcome.

Antitrust law does not prohibit companies from building ecosystems.

Fanatics can manufacture licensed cards, operate a breaking platform, authenticate collectibles, sell directly to fans, and expand across the sports economy.

TikTok can operate a marketplace and make commercial partnerships.

The law becomes interested when an ecosystem allegedly turns into a gate.

And that is the real question MVP has put before the court:

Did Fanatics and TikTok compete harder—or did they allegedly use control over different parts of the market to decide who was allowed to compete at all?

The complaint has not answered that question.

It has made it one worth watching.