Fanatics vs. Panini: How the Licensing Fight Reshaped the Sports Card Market

For a while, one of the biggest questions in the sports card hobby was whether Fanatics might eventually buy Panini. That idea felt plausible in 2022. Fanatics had just paid roughly $500 million for Topps. Panini held the exclusive NBA and NFL trading card licenses. An acquisition seemed like the obvious next step.

That is not the story the hobby ended up getting. Instead, Michael Rubin did something harder and more consequential. He took Panini's licenses away. Starting in 2023 for MLB, in October 2025 for the NBA, and on April 1, 2026 for the NFL, Panini is losing the three league exclusives that anchored its U.S. business for 15-plus years, not through a buyout, but through direct league-level negotiation with the MLBPA, NBA, NBPA, and NFLPA.

Underneath that, two federal antitrust lawsuits (Case 1:23-cv-09714 and 1:23-cv-06895 in the Southern District of New York), 34 Panini employees who walked out in a single week in April 2023, and a reported $2 billion Fanatics buyout offer in 2022 that Panini turned down. And beneath that again, a much bigger structural question: what does a trading card company actually look like when it loses the three most valuable sports licenses in North America?

This is the real Fanatics vs. Panini story, not the buyout speculation, but the licensing war that reshaped the entire sports card market.

Who Panini Actually Is

Before the U.S. hobby obsessed over Prizm, Panini had already been a global sticker powerhouse for half a century.

The company was founded in 1961 in Modena, Italy by Giuseppe and Benito Panini, soon joined by their brothers Franco and Umberto. It started a year earlier when the brothers bought unsold football (soccer) stickers from a Milan company and repackaged them into four-pack units. First-year sales: roughly 3 million packets at 10 lire each. By year two they had sold 15 million stickers. Panini's first FIFA World Cup sticker album launched in 1970, and the brand went international across Europe through the 1970s.

The Panini family sold the business to the Maxwell Group in 1988. Current ownership is held by the Baroni and Sallustro families, the Panini family itself is no longer involved. The Panini Group reported roughly €1.6 to €1.9 billion in global revenue in 2024, operates in 150 countries, and employs more than 1,200 people. As of April 2026, Italian financial media report Panini is exploring an IPO or strategic investor at a valuation around €5 billion (~$5.8 billion), with the company explicitly ruling out a sale to a competitor.

Panini's U.S. sports card business began in March 2009, when it acquired Donruss Playoff L.P. and formed Panini America, headquartered near Dallas. Mark Warsop has been CEO of Panini America since October 2009, having previously run Panini UK for eight years. The Donruss acquisition mattered because Donruss Playoff already held the NFL license, which gave Panini an immediate foothold in the biggest American sports card category. The rest of Panini's American rise came from winning exclusives the incumbents had just lost.

The 2009 Reshuffle That Built Modern Licensing

You can't understand what's happening to Panini now without understanding what happened to its predecessors in 2009. That year was the single biggest licensing reshuffle in modern sports card history.

In January 2009, the NBA ended its 17-year relationship with Upper Deck and also removed Topps from the category, awarding Panini the first-ever NBA exclusive trading card license, effective October 2009. The NBA's rationale, per Sports Business Journal's reporting at the time, was category consolidation in a shrinking market plus Panini's international reach. Panini reportedly beat competing bids by 25%. In August 2009, MLB announced it was ending its multi-licensee model and giving Topps its first MLB exclusive in roughly 30 years, with Commissioner Bud Selig framing it as an attempt to "restore baseball cards as the game's premiere collectable." And in April 2010, Upper Deck lost the NFL license, leaving Panini (via Donruss Playoff) to eventually consolidate NFL exclusivity, which became fully exclusive starting with the 2016 season.

Upper Deck's story after that is the one every collector should study now, because it is the clearest preview of what happens when a card company loses a major license.

After losing MLB, Upper Deck continued producing baseball cards under an MLBPA-only agreement, player names and likenesses yes, team logos and uniforms no. Upper Deck tried to keep using team marks anyway on its 2009 Signature Stars, 2009 Ultimate Collection, and 2010 Series 1 Baseball products. MLB sued for trademark infringement in February 2010. The case settled in March 2010: Upper Deck paid more than $2.4 million in back license fees, was permitted to sell through the three disputed releases, and was barred from future use of MLB logos, uniforms, or team color combinations. MLB approval is still required before Upper Deck can depict a baseball jersey, cap, or helmet of any kind. Upper Deck still produces baseball today, smaller, unlicensed, nowhere near its pre-2009 scale. The bulk of its business pivoted to NHL, where it retains the exclusive, and to entertainment properties like Marvel.

That is the precedent Panini is now staring at. A license is not a product. Losing one doesn't kill a card company. But it does shrink it dramatically.

Panini's 15-Year Peak

For roughly 15 years, from the 2009-10 NBA season through the 2025 NFL cycle, Panini had one of the strongest positions in the history of the hobby. Exclusive rights to the NBA and NFL, shared rights to MLB through 2022, and the FIFA World Cup sticker business internationally. The product library it built during that run is the real reason collectors care so much about what happens next.

Panini's flagship chromium brand, Prizm, launched in 2012-13 basketball with a 300-card checklist and a ~100-card rookie class blending 2011 and 2012 draft years. The Silver Prizm parallel became the modern-era Chrome Refractor equivalent. Prizm Football followed in 2014, and the Prizm family (plus Mosaic, Donruss Optic, and the chromium parallel ecosystem) has been the hobby's volume engine for most of the last decade. Select debuted in 2012-13 basketball (released April 2013) with its signature three-tier Concourse / Premier / Club structure. Mosaic began as "Prizm Mosaic" inserts in 2015-16 and became a standalone release in 2019-20.

On the high-end side, Immaculate Collection launched in 2012-13 basketball and 2015 football. Flawless, still one of the most expensive card products in the hobby, launched in 2012-13 basketball at $1,250 per pack, with football following in 2014. National Treasures became the industry's flagship Rookie Patch Autograph (RPA) line, known for cards numbered /99 of every major rookie class. Contenders, inherited from the Donruss/Playoff era, continued the Rookie Ticket Autograph design that traces back to 1998.

Panini's ceiling-setting sales are the ones most collectors know by name. The 2017 Panini National Treasures Patrick Mahomes Rookie Patch Auto Platinum 1/1 sold in a 2021 private PWCC sale for $4.3 million, the single most valuable Panini card ever sold and, at the time, a football card record. The 2018-19 Panini National Treasures Luka Doncic Logoman 1/1 sold privately in February 2021 for $4.6 million and then publicly in November 2022 for $3.12 million, setting the public-auction record for a basketball card at the time. These aren't trivia, they are evidence of how much collector capital Panini was capturing at the top of the market during its exclusive years.

That context matters because it explains why Panini fought so hard when Fanatics started coming for the licenses underneath those cards.

What Fanatics Did Differently

The smartest decision Fanatics made was declining to buy Panini. What it did instead was go directly to the leagues and player unions, and what those parties bought with the Fanatics deal wasn't just a new card manufacturer. It was equity.

The Fanatics agreements announced across August 2021 and 2022 included equity stakes for MLB, the MLBPA, the NBA, the NBPA, and the NFLPA in the new Fanatics Collectibles venture. That single move changed the incentive structure of U.S. sports card licensing. For the first time, the major leagues and their unions were direct financial beneficiaries of one trading card operator's long-term success. The old dynamic, multiple licensees competing for rights on relatively standard royalty terms, was effectively replaced by a partnership model where the leagues themselves were owners.

That partnership is what Panini was up against. Per Yahoo Sports' reporting, Fanatics reportedly offered Panini more than $2 billion in 2022 to walk away from the NFL and NBA exclusives early. Panini declined. The licenses expired on schedule instead: Panini's MLB and NBA player-association rights lapsed at the end of 2022, its NBA league-level exclusive ran through the 2024-25 season, and its NFL exclusive ends on March 31, 2026. Panini's last licensed NFL product, 2025 Panini Silhouette, is scheduled for release on March 27, 2026 — four days before the exclusive expires.

What filled that void on the Fanatics side is the full Fanatics Collectibles ecosystem: Topps as the public-facing brand, Fanatics Live as livestream commerce, Fanatics Collect (with PWCC folded in) as the secondary marketplace, the Sotheby's high-end auction partnership, and Fanatics Fest as the industry's largest live event. Fanatics didn't need to buy Panini to replace Panini. It built something bigger around the licenses Panini had been producing inside.

The Lawsuits Between Panini and Fanatics

Panini sued Fanatics on August 3, 2023, in the Middle District of Florida. The case was transferred to the Southern District of New York and proceeded as Case 1:23-cv-09714 (Panini America, Inc. v. Fanatics, Inc.). The core claim was a Sherman Act and Clayton Act antitrust action: Panini argued that Fanatics' stacking of exclusive league-plus-union contracts, combined with aggressive hiring from Panini's own ranks and the post-acquisition integration of Topps, constituted a monopoly over the licensed U.S. trading card market. Panini added allegations of tortious interference, defamation, and — notably — that Fanatics was paying rookies directly to keep their autographs out of Panini products.

Four days later, on August 7, 2023, Fanatics counter-sued in Case 1:23-cv-06895, alleging unfair competition, breach of the duty to negotiate in good faith, and tortious interference. Fanatics claimed roughly $200 million in lost revenue from Panini's alleged conduct and accused Panini of inflating earnings projections during the early-termination talks to prolong negotiations.

Underneath both lawsuits sat one of the most dramatic hobby events of 2023. Between April 4 and April 6, 34 Panini employees resigned in a single week and joined Fanatics. Named departures included Eli Nicholas Matijevich Jr. (VP of Product Development), Carlos Torrez (Senior Director of Print Production), Rob Springs (Director of Football Product Development), and roughly a dozen others across marketing, operations, and brand management. A court ruling in April 2023 barred Fanatics from affirmatively recruiting additional Panini employees but allowed it to hire any who applied independently, which, predictably, a lot more did.

On March 10, 2025, the court issued a mixed motion-to-dismiss ruling. Some claims were dismissed in whole or in part (Count V entirely, Count VI partially, Count VII partially, Count VIII partially), but the core monopolization claims survived. Panini was granted 21 days to seek leave to file a Second Amended Complaint on the deficient counts. A separate direct-buyer antitrust case, filed by Scaturo against Fanatics, was dismissed in March 2026 on pleading grounds. The Panini case is now in discovery and is expected to continue through 2026.

The outcome matters, but it matters less than collectors sometimes assume. Regardless of how the court rules, Panini's NFL license still expires on March 31, 2026. The lawsuits are about monetary damages and prospective injunctive relief, not about reversing licensing decisions already made by the leagues themselves.

What "Losing a License" Actually Looks Like

Every card has two layers of licensing. A league license (from MLB, the NBA, NFL, or NHL) grants use of team names, logos, uniforms, helmets, and stadium marks. A players association license grants use of player names and likenesses. A fully licensed card has both. A card with only a players association license has real players in generic or blurred uniforms, no visible team logos, no league branding. A card with neither is effectively an art card.

Panini is entering the "players association only" era on the NFL side starting April 2026. It can still make cards of Patrick Mahomes and Caleb Williams. It cannot show them in Chiefs or Commanders jerseys, helmets, or team color combinations. That's a meaningful change in what Panini's NFL products actually look like, and history suggests it is a meaningful change in what collectors pay for them.

The clearest precedent is Upper Deck's MLB era after 2009. Licensed Topps versions of the same player routinely outperformed Upper Deck's unlicensed-era releases in both secondary-market pricing and long-term grading populations. One widely cited example in hobby media compares a licensed Shohei Ohtani rookie that sold for $139,200 against an unlicensed equivalent at $9,600, a 93% discount. That specific comparison is from a hobby digest rather than a primary auction record, so treat the exact number with some skepticism, but the directional truth is visible across almost every cross-licensing comparison collectors have documented. Licensed versions become the default reference point. Unlicensed versions are treated as second-tier alternatives.

There is real nuance here. Unlicensed products often offer more autographs per dollar, lower box prices, and sometimes better collectible design without the logo constraints. Leaf, Onyx Vintage, and Panini's unlicensed baseball brands (Chronicles Baseball, Diamond Kings, Prospect Edition at ~$150 per hobby box) have their defenders, and some collectors genuinely prefer them. But in aggregate, licensed cards capture the vast majority of hobby spending and almost all of the record-setting auction prices. That aggregate pattern is what matters when evaluating the forward trajectory of any company that just lost a major license.

Panini already got a preview of this. The 2025-26 Panini Donruss & Signatures Basketball release in October 2025 was its first unlicensed NBA product in the Panini exclusive era — no NBA marks, no team identifiers, just NBPA-licensed player rights. Reception was mixed. Collectors appreciated the continuation of familiar design DNA but widely noted the cards felt less complete without the logos. That is the template for what Panini NFL looks like beginning April 2026.

What Panini Looks Like in 2027

Losing the NFL and NBA doesn't end Panini. It reshapes it into a different company, and the pieces of that reshaping are already public.

Soccer is the strategic anchor. On December 14, 2023, FIFA and Panini announced a 50-year renewal of their historic partnership covering official stickers, trading cards, trading card games, and digital collectibles through the 2026 and 2030 World Cups and beyond. The 2026 World Cup sticker album is billed as Panini's largest ever (48 national teams). That said, The Athletic reported in April 2026 that Fanatics is acquiring separate licensing rights for cards and sticker books of major national federations, England, Brazil, Germany, Italy, for staggered windows between 2027 and 2035, and that FIFA named Fanatics its official on-site retail licensee for the 2026 World Cup. The Panini-FIFA partnership is renewed, but the soccer territory around it is no longer uncontested.

Women's sports are the growth story. In November 2025, Panini and the WNBPA renewed their exclusive deal in what both parties described as "the most lucrative licensing partnership ever for women athletes." The agreement covers Prizm, Donruss, Select, and National Treasures, runs across physical and digital products, and was brokered by OneTeam Partners. Panini has held the WNBA license since 2019, and the company says WNBA card sales have grown more than 100x under its tenure, driven substantially by the Caitlin Clark effect. In March 2026, Panini is also launching a multi-year exclusive trading card deal with the NWSL and NWSLPA.

College remains a path. Panini's OneTeam-brokered NCAA program, expanded after NIL went into effect, now covers more than 200 schools across football, basketball, baseball, and Olympic sports.

Unlicensed NFL continues. Industry reporting suggests Panini will use its NFLPA rights to keep producing NFL-flavored products with player names and likenesses, just without team marks. This is the Upper Deck playbook. Expect Panini NFL products to continue, at lower per-unit pricing, and at meaningfully smaller overall market share than the company captured during its exclusive years.

Non-sports and adjacent properties. Panini retains WWE and NASCAR licenses along with its long-standing European soccer league deals.

The honest assessment is that Panini remains a real business, €1.6–1.9 billion in global revenue, real soccer/WNBA/college positions, and the most established sticker operation in the world. What it won't be is the center of the U.S. sports card hobby. That center is moving to Fanatics.

What Collectors Should Take From This

The first takeaway is that licensing shapes the hobby more than most collectors realized. In the 2010s it was easy to think of Topps and Panini as interchangeable manufacturer brands. That framing doesn't hold anymore. Licensing isn't a background detail, it determines which products feel like "the official record" of a given sport and which are positioned as alternatives. When evaluating a release for long-term hold, knowing who holds the license as of the card's year is more important than it used to be.

The second is that "unlicensed" isn't automatically a death sentence for value, but it is a discount. Upper Deck's post-2009 MLB history shows you can sustain a business without a major league license, but you don't compete at the same tier of pricing or collector attention. Factor that into any decision to buy late-cycle Panini NBA or Panini NFL product in expectation of long-term appreciation. The final Prizm NFL release (2025 Panini Prizm Football, with 63 parallels at ~$1,000+ hobby boxes) is a legitimate product, but its value trajectory going forward is not the same as a flagship product produced by the active license-holder.

The third is that record sales like the $4.3 million Mahomes and $4.6 million Luka RPAs don't disappear just because Panini loses the license. Those cards exist. They will keep trading. They may even appreciate as the Panini NFL and NBA catalogs become closed rather than ongoing. That's actually one of the subtler effects of losing a license, it turns a company's product catalog into a finite, no-new-supply asset class, which historically benefits premium cards from that catalog even as new products shift elsewhere.

The fourth is the practical one. Pay more attention to who operates each part of the hobby infrastructure now, not just who makes the cards, but who runs the marketplace, the grading company (with PSA/SGC/Beckett now all under Collectors Holdings), the auction house, the live selling platform, and the event calendar. The hobby is no longer a network of loosely connected independents. It is an integrated industry with two dominant operators on opposite sides of the stack (Fanatics and Collectors Holdings). Understanding that map makes almost every collecting decision cleaner.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Fanatics buy Panini?

No. Fanatics never acquired Panini. Fanatics reportedly offered Panini more than $2 billion in 2022 to exit the NFL and NBA exclusives early; Panini declined. The licenses subsequently expired on schedule through direct league and players-association negotiations.

When does Panini lose its NFL license?

March 31, 2026. Topps, under Fanatics, takes over the exclusive NFL license on April 1, 2026. Panini's last licensed NFL product, 2025 Panini Silhouette, releases March 27, 2026. The first Fanatics-era release, 2025 Topps Chrome Football, launches April 15, 2026.

What were the Fanatics-Panini lawsuits about?

Panini sued Fanatics in August 2023 (Case 1:23-cv-09714) alleging Sherman and Clayton Act antitrust violations, the core claim that Fanatics' exclusive league-plus-union deals constitute a monopoly on the licensed U.S. trading card market. Fanatics counter-sued (Case 1:23-cv-06895) alleging unfair competition and breach of good-faith negotiation. In March 2025, the court dismissed portions of Panini's complaint but allowed the core monopolization claims to proceed to discovery.

What does "unlicensed" mean for a card?

A fully licensed card has both a league license (team names, logos, uniforms) and a players association license (player names, likenesses). An "unlicensed" card in the post-2026 Panini NFL context specifically means Panini holds NFLPA rights (real players) but not the NFL license (no team logos, no team color combinations, no visible team marks on uniforms).

Will unlicensed Panini NFL cards be worth less than Fanatics NFL cards?

In aggregate, almost certainly yes. The Upper Deck MLB precedent from 2009-2010 and more recent unlicensed-product comparisons suggest unlicensed versions consistently trade at significant discounts to fully licensed equivalents. Exact discount percentages vary by player and product, but the directional pattern is very consistent across cross-license comparisons.

Is Panini going out of business?

No. Panini Group reported roughly €1.6 to €1.9 billion in global revenue in 2024 and is reportedly exploring an IPO or strategic investor at a ~€5 billion valuation. It retains FIFA World Cup 2026 and 2030 rights (50-year renewal announced December 2023), an exclusive WNBA/WNBPA deal renewed in November 2025, the NWSL/NWSLPA partnership beginning March 2026, college (NIL) across 200+ schools via OneTeam Partners, and WWE and NASCAR licenses. It will be a smaller company in U.S. sports cards and a more soccer- and women's-sports-focused company overall.

What about Panini's record-setting cards like the Mahomes RPA?

They continue to exist and trade. The 2017 Panini National Treasures Mahomes RPA Platinum 1/1 ($4.3M sale) and the 2018-19 Luka Doncic National Treasures Logoman 1/1 ($4.6M private / $3.12M public) aren't affected by future licensing changes. In some cases, losing a license can actually strengthen premium cards from the closed catalog because no new supply is being produced.

The Bottom Line

The Fanatics vs. Panini story is not a story about one company buying another. It's a story about one company going around the other to the source, the leagues and player unions themselves, and offering a partnership structure neither Panini nor any previous operator was positioned to match.

What collectors should take from this is not cynicism about either company. Panini built an extraordinary 15 years of product catalog, secured record-setting sales, and still holds meaningful international, women's-sports, and college-market positions. Fanatics bet enormous capital on a thesis about vertical integration and league partnership that turned out to be correct. Both stories are legitimate.

The structural reality is simpler. From 2026 forward, licensed NFL trading cards in the United States will be Fanatics products. Licensed MLB trading cards already are. Licensed NBA trading cards already are. Panini becomes a meaningful participant in the hobby from outside those three exclusives, not inside them. That is the actual change the licensing fight produced, and it is the change every serious collector should be planning around.

Understanding that clearly, and collecting inside it with your eyes open, is the job now.