Tom Brady attends the Fanatics and Topps 'Hobby Rip Night' event with Michael Rubin, Tom Brady, Kevin Hart and Travis Scott on September 30, 2023 in Lynwood, New Jersey.
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Since launching New York Comic-Con in 2006, the convention has evolved beyond comics into a wide-ranging fan celebration of anime, video games, television, film and all things pop culture, attracting more than 200,000 attendees last year.
Now, Fanatics wants to do the same thing but with respect to sports, hosting a three-day event in New York City in August that aims to be at the center of sports fandom, culture and collecting.
Lance Fensterman, CEO of Fanatics Events and former president of ReedPop — where he produced pop culture events like New York Comic-Con, Complex-Con and Star Wars Celebration — said he sees many similarities between pop culture fans and sports fans. However, he noted that while events like New York Comic-Con have evolved to include diverse fan bases and communities, the sports-focused event space is “ripe for disruption a little bit.”
“You have collector shows and card shows, and there are thousands of them across the United States, and they're great for collectors. You also have league- and team-sponsored fan fests that are very specific to that sport or team,” Fensterman said. “What we're trying to do is combine the best elements of all of that, and then culture and entertainment.”
The three-day event, called Fanatics Fest NYC, will be held at New York City's Javits Center, the massive exhibition center that has hosted New York Comic-Con, the New York International Auto Show, and other major conventions and events. The event will include multiple stages and theaters, interactive features and games, merchandise and trading card areas, and a museum display of rare cards and sports memorabilia. Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Eli and Peyton Manning, Kevin Durant, Sabrina Ionescu and Hulk Hogan are just some of the big sports names scheduled to appear, Fensterman said.
Fensterman said the event will also look to go beyond sports, incorporating entrepreneurs, artists and cultural influencers into the programmes, providing a platform to talk about how sports can be used as a platform for inspiration. There will be exclusive apparel collaborations and a variety of unique products from hundreds of teams and leagues that are fanatical partners, which includes nearly every professional sports entity in the United States such as the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, UFC and WWE.
“Those are the moments we get excited about, and we don't see that happening anywhere else in the world of live sporting events,” Fensterman said.
Fanatics Events, which launched last July in partnership with Endeavor-owned talent management company IMG, held its first large-scale activation last week, overseeing WWE World at WrestleMania, a five-day festival held alongside WWE's premier event in Philadelphia. The festival was the highest-grossing and most-attended fan event in WWE history, according to fanatics.
Fanatics events the world of WWE at WrestleMania, a five-day festival held in conjunction with WWE's premier event in Philadelphia.
Through this broader sports effort, Fanatics Fest NYC will help the Fanatics Events team pursue concurrent business goals: elevating Fanatics' other vertical businesses and creating new business around sports events.
Ticket prices for the event range from $20 to $400, and general admission tickets for adults will be $50 per day. Fensterman said his goal is to attract 50,000 to 100,000 fans for this inaugural event, which will likely lead to other, smaller events around the country. He said the company would also look to host events in international markets, to help its league partners looking to build fan bases abroad.
This new set of events will also help support the company's other business lines: the merchandising and merchandise division, the collectibles and trading cards business, the live streaming shopping business, and the sports betting division.
Fanatics, a three-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company ranked No. 21 in 2022, has evolved far beyond the merchandise roots on which Michael Rubin founded the company. The company's meteoric rise has helped it earn a valuation of more than $31 billion and put it on the path to a potential IPO. It also put a magnifying glass on the company's movements. The company says it has been incorrectly blamed for issues with Major League Baseball jerseys this spring, while also finding itself in a legal battle with DraftKings over its expansion into sports betting.
