Quote:
Originally Posted by nat
"the simplest reason is Fanatics is promising MLB and MLBPA (and the NBA/NBAPA and NFL/NFLPA) more $$$ then they are making in the current contract with Topps. Nothing more, nothing less"
That's most of it, but there's also the fact that MLB owns a slice of Fanatics (a minority slice, it's true, but they own part of it). To some extent, they were selling the license to themselves.
|
As supposedly do the MLBPA, and the other major U.S. sports leagues and their player's unions/associations who also own a piece of Fanatics as well. So yes, they are in effect selling the licensing to themselves. And these groups not only get the up-front licensing money, like they did in the past from Topps and other card companies, they are also now supposedly going to be sharing in the back-end profit that would otherwise have been going to the Topps and other card companies' ownership.
In other words, the sports leagues and players to some extent are just basically cutting out the middle man and going to be selling cards directly to the public themselves.