Fanatics boss outlines goal-scoring tactics in Europe having conquered the US

As the US-based company expands its reach overseas with its first media and retail partnership with Sky Sports in the UK, Jack Boyle, Fanatics global co-president for direct-to-consumer (DTC), talks to Retail Week about the company’s key to success, global expansion and its biggest competitors. 

Fanatics chair and chief executive Michael Rubin acquired Fanatics in 2011. At the time, it was a Florida-based sports retailer with an ecommerce presence across both college and professional teams. 

Today Fanatics has grown into an international business and describes itself as a “global digital sports platform” divided into three verticals: Fanatics Commerce, Fanatics Collectibles and Fanatics Betting and Gaming. 

In December 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that the business had raised $700m in funds from private-equity firm Clearlake Capital Group and investment firm LionTree, bringing the total valuation of the business to $31bn.

Boyle explains how Fanatics’ different aspects tie in together: “We’re on a journey to build the leading global digital sports platform across a number of distinct, unique, but also interconnected business lines.

“Right now we have three: our core merchandise ecommerce business, our collectibles business and our newer business, which is the betting and gaming business.” 

Across the pond 

While Fanatics has built a multibillion-dollar empire by manufacturing and selling licensed National Football League, Major League Baseball, National Basketball Association and National Hockey League sportswear and collectibles in the US, Europe and the UK’s rabid football fanbases will represent a new, but potentially highly lucrative, challenge for the business. 

As part of its plans to strengthen its foothold in these key markets across the Atlantic, Fanatics recently announced its first partnership with a European broadcaster, partnering with Sky Sports to set up an online retail shop available in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy.  

As Fanatics targets growth in Europe, it plans to build and benefit from more media and sports partnerships.

Boyle says: “We have an opportunity that really nobody else in sports does. We can leverage our database of 90 million fans.

“We bring our leading tech and digital marketing expertise to our partners; we have incredible relationships as a trusted brand.

“And for many of our partners, and Sky is certainly a great example, we have an opportunity to address a retail business that really has never existed before.” 

Fanatics has also been hard at work from a licensing point of view, announcing a number of different league partnerships in Europe over the last few months.

These include deals with the Royal Belgian and German Football Associations and the French Football Federation, and acquiring omnichannel sports retailer EPI in Italy to gain a stronger foothold in southern Europe. 

While Boyle remains tight-lipped about new partnerships in this space for now, he is confident that more are in the pipeline.

“We can’t pre-announce anything right now. But if we sit down a couple of months from now, we’ll have an entirely broader list of new partners within Europe.” 

IPO in the pipeline?

Rumours of the sports platform company floating on the New York Stock Exchange first started when Fanatics hired Meta’s head of investor relations, Deborah Crawford, to lead investor relations in the company in April 2023.

At the time, Fanatics executive vice-president and chief financial officer Glenn Schiffman told CNBC that the company plans to eventually go public. 

“We’re not going public near-term. We’ve thought about it medium-term. Eventually, we will go public,” Schiffman told CNBC.

“We’ve been on record that it’s medium-term – that’s 12 to 24 months –  but it’ll depend on the state of the business, it’ll depend on the state of the markets, it’ll depend on our goals.

“I wouldn’t read into the definition of medium-term, short-term, long-term; I think we’re gearing up, we’re investing in our business, we’re investing in our talent, we’re investing in our team to be able to choose the right time.”

Boyle is as cautious as possible and declines to comment on any questions asked about a possible IPO or its timeline.

A Fanatics spokesperson said: “While an IPO is clearly an available option to us at some point in the future, there has been no change to the timing.

“Any public offering is just a moment in time as our focus remains on expanding our businesses and building the leading digital sports platform over the next decade and beyond.”

Top of the table clash

While Fanatics has an established customer base, the market for sports merchandise in the UK is already well occupied by big players such as JD Sports and Sports Direct, which sell licensed merchandise as part of their larger offering.

Other competitors include global sportswear giants such as Adidas and Nike, both of whom have carefully cultivated years worth of strong, DTC partnerships with pro-athletes and sports teams.

However, given Fanatics’ unique business proposition, Boyle says it is “hard to pin down just one competitor”.

“We compete against a lot of different organisations out there in the retail landscape who offer licensed and team sports merchandise as a part of their assortment,” he says.

“But we’re one of the few, and certainly the biggest, who wake up every day and all we do is think about the fans. We don’t compete in other categories of general merchandise or home goods or anything like that.

“We’re really the only ones who focus completely on the fan.” 

As Fanatics expands its reach to become a one-of-a-kind global sports platform, it remains to be seen whether it succeeds in floating on the stock market and emerges a winner in a field where other DTC brands have struggled.