The Fanatics Ecosystem: When Does Vertical Integration Become Market Power?

Strategic Analysis | September 12, 2026

Fanatics does not hide what it is building.

The company describes itself as an integrated sports ecosystem reaching more than 100 million fans and maintaining relationships with more than 900 sports properties. In collectibles alone, its businesses can help create the product, sell the product, stream somebody opening the product, store the product, send it for grading, resell it, and put thousands of collectors in the same building to trade it.

That sounds either brilliant or alarming depending on where you sit.

For a collector, integration can mean fewer steps, better products, more liquidity, easier authentication, faster transactions, and experiences that did not previously exist.

For a competitor, the same system can look very different.

What if the company that controls the most desirable products also owns a marketplace competing to sell them? What if it operates a livestream platform competing with independent breakers? What if it controls access to exclusive athlete content, valuable league intellectual property, direct-to-consumer distribution, and major collector events? What if participation in one part of the ecosystem begins to affect access to another?

That is where the Fanatics story becomes an antitrust story.

Not because vertical integration is illegal. It usually is not.

Not because Fanatics is large. Size alone is not an antitrust violation.

And not because every exclusive license is suspicious. Exclusivity is common in sports precisely because leagues, players associations, manufacturers, retailers, and broadcasters often need concentrated rights to justify substantial investment.

The harder question is this: Can Fanatics take power legitimately acquired in one layer of the sports economy and use it to make meaningful competition in another layer dependent on staying inside the Fanatics ecosystem?

That is the pressure point.

And a growing collection of lawsuits is starting to test it.

Start upstream.

Fanatics launched its trading-card business after securing long-term rights from major leagues and players associations, then acquired Topps in 2022. Today Fanatics Collectibles describes itself as the exclusive trading-card licensee for MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and their associated players rights, among numerous other sports and entertainment properties. The NBA and NBPA formally moved their exclusive licensed-card program to Topps in October 2025; the NFL and NFLPA did the same in April 2026.

Those rights matter because sports cards are not ordinary widgets.

Anyone can manufacture cardboard.

You cannot manufacture an official NFL card featuring Patrick Mahomes in a Chiefs uniform simply because you own a printing press.

The economically valuable product depends on intellectual-property inputs that cannot be reproduced by a competing manufacturer: league logos, team marks, uniforms, player group rights, and—increasingly—exclusive individual athlete rights.

Then move downstream.

Fanatics owns Topps, the manufacturer and brand.

It operates Fanatics Live, a livestream-commerce platform built in part around card breaking.

It operates Fanatics Collect, the successor to PWCC, offering fixed-price sales, auctions, vaulting, collection management, and connections to outside grading companies.

Its Vault reports more than one million stored items representing more than $500 million in value.

It operates Fanatics Authentic, which has exclusive autograph arrangements with numerous major athletes and sells officially licensed game-used and signed memorabilia.

Its broader commerce business operates online stores and physical retail for hundreds of leagues, teams, colleges, and sports properties.

And Fanatics Events operates Fanatics Fest, which drew approximately 200,000 attendees in 2026 and incorporated Topps product drops, live breaking, grading services, athlete appearances, memorabilia, and more than 250 independent hobby dealers.

That is the important strategic point.

Fanatics is not simply competing horizontally against another card manufacturer.

It increasingly participates at multiple points between the creation of sports intellectual property and the moment a collector ultimately owns, stores, trades, or resells the resulting collectible.

The value of each layer can reinforce the others.

Exclusive sports rights make Topps products desirable.

Desirable Topps products attract breakers.

Breakers attract viewers to Fanatics Live.

Collectors generate transactions.

Transactions supply inventory to Fanatics Collect.

Vaulting makes resale easier.

Events create product launches and scarcity.

Commerce relationships connect Fanatics directly to leagues and fans.

More participation creates more data, liquidity, and reasons to remain inside the system.

That is an ecosystem.

And ecosystems behave differently from ordinary companies.

This point matters because the easiest critique of Fanatics is also the weakest one.

“They own too much.”

That is not an antitrust test.

Vertical integration often creates legitimate economic benefits. A manufacturer that also distributes its product can reduce transaction costs. A marketplace that connects directly to storage can make trading easier. A company with long-term licensing rights may invest more heavily in design, technology, marketing, and global distribution because it knows competitors cannot immediately free-ride on that investment.

The Federal Trade Commission expressly recognizes that exclusive-dealing arrangements are often lawful and can encourage investment, specialization, and promotional support.

And Fanatics has a strong factual story to tell.

Its NFL cards are not confined to Fanatics properties; the company announced distribution through NFLShop.com, selected retailers, hobby shops, and Fanatics Live.

Fanatics Collect does not own the major grading services. It partners with independent firms including PSA, Beckett, SGC, and CGC.

Fanatics Fest does not exclude independent sellers. Hundreds of hobby dealers participate.

Its marketplace competes with deeply established alternatives such as eBay and specialized collecting platforms.

And integration has produced actual consumer features: one shipment can move a raw card to an independent grader, then into the Fanatics Vault, then directly onto the Fanatics marketplace without the collector ever receiving it back.

That is the best argument for Fanatics.

The ecosystem lowers friction.

Antitrust law is not supposed to force a company to become less efficient merely because competitors dislike competing against the resulting product.

The problem begins somewhere else.

Imagine three separate markets.

Company A controls an indispensable input.

Company B sells the finished product.

Company C controls a major route to customers.

Standing alone, none of those positions necessarily creates a competition problem.

Now put all three functions into one ecosystem.

If the integrated company uses superior coordination to lower prices or create a better experience, that is competition.

If it starts saying:

You get the input only if you use our marketplace.

You get favorable distribution only if you stop selling competing products.

You get access to customers only if you join our platform.

You get the product everybody wants only if you abandon the rival we are trying to displace.

Then the legal analysis changes.

The DOJ and FTC describe essentially this concern in their current merger framework: integration can become competitively significant when a firm gains the ability to limit rivals’ access to an important product, service, or route to market that competitors need to operate effectively.

That does not mean the 2023 Merger Guidelines themselves decide whether Fanatics has violated antitrust law; they are nonbinding enforcement guidance, not a judicial holding. But they capture the economic problem unusually well.

The concern is leverage transfer.

Fanatics may lawfully possess valuable NFL trading-card rights.

Fanatics may lawfully operate Fanatics Live.

Fanatics may lawfully own a marketplace.

The harder question is whether control of one becomes a tool for suppressing competition in another.

A newly filed series of California cases puts that exact theory into concrete form.

On September 10, MVP Breaks sued Fanatics, TikTok, ByteDance, and related entities alleging a coordinated scheme to disadvantage independent livestream breakers unless they agreed to source and sell Fanatics products. Similar suits have been filed by Dorm Dudes and other breakers, while an earlier action by David Skalsky also named Fanatics, TikTok, and NFL entities. These remain allegations, not established facts.

The allegations are significant precisely because TikTok is outside Fanatics’ own ecosystem.

If proved, the alleged conduct would suggest something more ambitious than self-preferencing on Fanatics Live.

It would suggest an attempt to extend product-side leverage into a third-party distribution platform.

That could change the economics dramatically.

A breaker who does not like Fanatics Live can theoretically use TikTok.

A breaker who does not like Fanatics Collect can theoretically use eBay.

A retailer unhappy with Fanatics can theoretically sell competing collectibles.

Competition survives if those alternatives are economically realistic.

But if rivals allege that the dominant product supplier can influence access to those outside alternatives too, then the supposed escape routes matter much less.

That is why foreclosure will become one of the key words in these cases.

The legal question is not whether a competitor encountered difficulty.

It is whether enough meaningful routes to inputs or customers were constrained that competition itself became impaired.

The breaker litigation is not the first challenge to Fanatics’ strategy.

Panini has been litigating its own sprawling antitrust case against Fanatics in the Southern District of New York.

Panini alleges that Fanatics accumulated long-term exclusive rights covering major U.S. professional sports trading cards and then used expected future control to pressure retailers, local card shops, athletes, employees, and breakers. Panini also alleges that Fanatics acquired a controlling interest in GC Packaging, a manufacturer that had produced a large percentage of Panini’s U.S. cards, and then impaired Panini’s access to that manufacturing capacity. Fanatics disputes the allegations.

The March 2025 ruling in that case is important—but easy to overstate.

Judge Laura Taylor Swain did not find Fanatics liable for monopolization.

She held that Panini had adequately pleaded several antitrust theories sufficiently to survive a motion to dismiss. At that stage, the court was required to accept well-pleaded factual allegations as true and draw appropriate inferences for Panini.

Still, one part of the reasoning should have Fanatics’ attention.

The court concluded that Panini plausibly alleged monopoly power based not simply on projected market share but on alleged conduct showing an ability to control prices or exclude competitors. And it treated allegations of coercion—including threats of future exclusion—as potentially significant to whether Fanatics acquired or maintained power through anticompetitive means.

The case remains active in discovery in 2026.

That creates an important continuum.

Panini attacks the upstream architecture.

The newer breaker cases attack alleged downstream distribution practices.

If those disputes remain separate, Fanatics may be defending individual business decisions.

If plaintiffs can convincingly connect them, the litigation becomes an ecosystem case.

That difference matters.

This may be the most important litigation point.

Business strategists think in ecosystems.

Antitrust courts think in relevant markets.

Those are not the same thing.

Fanatics can have an impressive position across a dozen complementary businesses and still lack monopoly power in any legally cognizable market.

A plaintiff therefore cannot simply draw a chart:

Topps → Fanatics Live → Fanatics Collect → Vault → Fanatics Fest

and announce monopoly.

The plaintiff must identify the actual competitive arena.

Is the market major U.S. professional sports trading cards?

NFL cards?

Licensed sports memorabilia?

Breaking services?

Livestream breaking?

Online resale marketplaces?

Collector vaulting?

Sports-commerce platforms?

Access to specific league intellectual property?

The narrower the alleged market, the easier it may be to show power—but the harder it can become to prove that the boundaries reflect how consumers and businesses actually substitute.

The broader the market, the easier the definition may be to defend—but the harder it becomes to show dominance or substantial foreclosure.

That is why market definition is not technical housekeeping here.

It is strategy.

The unique ingredient is intellectual property.

A new card manufacturer can build a factory.

It cannot independently create NFL logo rights.

A marketplace can recruit sellers.

It cannot manufacture LeBron James group licensing rights.

A breaker can move from one platform to another.

It cannot replace officially licensed inventory with an economically identical substitute if collectors specifically want licensed NFL, NBA, or MLB products.

That makes upstream sports rights unusually powerful inputs.

And Fanatics’ exclusive position has expanded beyond the major U.S. leagues. Its portfolio includes the Premier League and other international sports, while a long-term FIFA collectibles agreement announced in 2026 will eventually add global FIFA products beginning in full in 2031.

This does not mean the licenses themselves are unlawful.

Rights holders frequently prefer exclusive partners because a single licensee may offer larger guarantees, coordinated marketing, better global distribution, and more willingness to invest.

But exclusivity becomes strategically more consequential when the licensee is also building businesses downstream.

The license is no longer merely permission to produce a card.

It can become an anchor around which the rest of an ecosystem forms.

Fanatics’ strategic genius is that every part of the system potentially strengthens another part.

More exclusive rights create better inventory.

Better inventory attracts collectors.

Collectors attract breakers and sellers.

More transactions produce liquidity.

Liquidity makes the marketplace more useful.

Vaulting makes staying in the marketplace easier.

Lower friction produces more transactions.

Events reinforce community and provide exclusive product launches.

League relationships deepen.

Athlete relationships create differentiated inventory.

And the cycle repeats.

That is a flywheel.

A flywheel becomes an antitrust concern when it turns into a moat competitors cannot realistically cross.

The distinction is not philosophical. It is evidentiary.

Can a rival manufacturer obtain meaningful licenses?

Can an independent breaker obtain sufficient inventory on competitive terms?

Can a seller leave Fanatics Collect without losing economically important benefits?

Can a collector multi-home across platforms?

Can a competing livestream platform attract enough exclusive or desirable product to build its own network effects?

Can a rival event obtain athletes, leagues, collectors, and product launches on comparable terms?

Fanatics Collect recently added another interesting incentive: eligible sellers can take proceeds in FanCash instead of cash and receive a 0% marketplace seller fee. That can be a perfectly legitimate loyalty mechanism. It also illustrates how an ecosystem can make remaining inside the network economically attractive even without formally excluding anyone.

There is nothing inherently unlawful about that.

But switching costs do not always arrive wearing a “you may not leave” sign.

Sometimes they arrive as benefits too valuable to abandon.

The modern collectibles business is increasingly a platform business.

Fanatics Live connects sellers and viewers.

Fanatics Collect connects buyers and sellers.

Both become more attractive as participation increases.

That creates network effects.

The federal antitrust agencies specifically recognize that platform operators can compete at multiple levels: between platforms, on the platform, and against businesses attempting to displace a platform altogether. They also flag the conflict that can arise when a platform operator competes against participants using its platform.

Again, that guidance does not automatically make Fanatics’ practices unlawful.

But it identifies the structural tension.

A marketplace wants as many good sellers as possible.

A vertically integrated owner may also prefer transactions involving its own products, inventory, services, or affiliated businesses.

Those incentives can coexist.

Antitrust scrutiny intensifies when the second overwhelms the first.

Here is the paradox.

The more useful Fanatics makes the ecosystem, the more valuable integration becomes.

And the more valuable integration becomes, the more costly it may become for competitors or customers to operate outside it.

That does not mean Fanatics should make its products worse to preserve competition.

Quite the opposite.

Competition law generally wants companies to win by building better things.

But the difference between winning because everybody wants to join and winning because everybody has to join is enormous.

That is the line Fanatics needs to manage.

For Fanatics, the safest long-term strategy may therefore be openness at the ecosystem’s interfaces:

clear product-allocation rules;

credible access for independent hobby stores;

multiple distribution channels;

continued relationships with independent grading firms;

transparent marketplace rules;

documented business justifications for exclusivity;

and careful separation between legitimate incentives and retaliation against firms that work with competitors.

That is not merely antitrust compliance.

It may be good ecosystem design.

A platform becomes stronger when participants trust that the owner will not change the rules simply because somebody became too successful outside the owner’s preferred lane.

The leagues and players associations should not treat this as purely Fanatics’ problem.

Exclusive licenses can be extraordinarily valuable.

They produce guaranteed economics and give the licensee an incentive to invest heavily in the property.

But as the licensee expands downstream, licensors should consider what their rights are helping create.

A long exclusive contract that looks like a simple card license in isolation may function differently when combined with manufacturing, distribution, athlete agreements, marketplaces, livestream sales, events, memorabilia, and direct fan relationships.

That does not make the contract anticompetitive.

It does mean its economic consequences cannot always be analyzed in isolation.

For leagues and unions monetizing scarce IP, the question increasingly becomes not merely:

Who will pay the most for this license?

It is also:

What market structure does this license help create?

Fanatics will probably continue winning individual debates.

Exclusive licensing? Common.

Vertical integration? Usually efficient.

Fanatics Live? Competitors exist.

Fanatics Collect? Competitors exist.

Fanatics Fest? Independent dealers participate.

Athlete exclusives? Standard commercial practice.

Topps? Acquiring a historic brand does not itself prove monopoly.

Look at every element separately and Fanatics has a plausible defense.

The legal vulnerability emerges when plaintiffs convince a court to connect the pieces.

That is what Panini is attempting upstream.

It is what the breaker plaintiffs are now attempting downstream.

And it is what regulators evaluating future Fanatics transactions may increasingly do prospectively. The current merger guidelines specifically instruct agencies to examine whether acquisitions create control over routes to market, extend a dominant position, form part of a broader acquisition strategy, or alter competition on multi-sided platforms.

Fanatics therefore faces an unusual strategic challenge.

Its strongest business argument is:

Look at everything we can connect.

Its strongest antitrust argument may eventually need to be:

Look at each market separately.

Both can be true.

Fanatics does not have an antitrust problem merely because it owns Topps, operates Fanatics Live, runs Fanatics Collect, stages Fanatics Fest, holds valuable sports licenses, sells memorabilia, works with athletes, and reaches fans through hundreds of commercial relationships.

That is vertical integration.

And much of it appears designed to solve genuine problems in a fragmented collectibles industry.

The antitrust question begins when integration changes from coordination to dependency.

If a competitor can still obtain inputs, find customers, reach collectors, sell through alternative platforms, and build a viable business, the Fanatics ecosystem looks like aggressive competition.

If access to essential sports rights, desirable products, major audiences, or meaningful routes to market increasingly depends on accepting terms dictated elsewhere in the Fanatics system, the analysis becomes different.

The law does not prohibit building the best ecosystem.

It cares when the ecosystem becomes the gatekeeper.

And that is why the current lawsuits matter well beyond trading cards.

They are beginning to test one of the central competition questions facing modern sports business:

When one company connects enough parts of the game, at what point does everyone else stop choosing the ecosystem—and start needing permission to compete outside it?