Market Decipher noted that the sports trading card market in the U.S. grew to $12.9 billion after a pandemic boom, but Fanatics doesn’t envision that market growing 13% a year and topping $49 billion by 2032 without tapping into the memory structure of millennial fans while building off of the newly generated recollections of ensuing generations.
“The way you tie that together is in the way that you message it, but also the way that you deliver it,” Turner said, noting that Topps’ new campaigns have blended long-form ads on YouTube with Instagram stories and reels. ”It’s a really good formula that we’ve been using to allow us to engage with the current collector, but also grow and engage with the new collector.”
From nostalgia to newstalgia
From 2019 through 2021—at the height of the pandemic-fueled trading card comeback—consumer analytics platform Civic Science conducted a survey of card buyers and found that 35% to 41% made their purchases based on nostalgia. That outpaced the 26% to 27% who simply liked the player on the card, the 22% to 25% who saw cards as investment, and the 11% to 16% looking to flip them for profit.
While those 24 and under are still more likely to be actively rooting for the player on their card (48%), nostalgia becomes a main driver for collectors from 25-34 (36%) and only gets stronger once they hit 35-54 (44%). Anjali Bal, a professor of marketing at Babson College specializing in sports and entertainment marketing, noted that millennial sports sentimentality holds certain advantages for sports marketers.
“Millennials really started the shift toward where the athletes had the power in the marketing relationship versus a team or a location or a sport,” Bal said. “There’s a connection and a nostalgia to those players who grew up with us, and that’s why we’re seeing millennials favoring millennial athletes even if they’re no longer in the sport.”
The problem for brands like Bowman, Topps and Fanatics is that—as Civic Science found—only about 20% of the general public buys sports trading cards. While 34% of Gen Z and the 39% of the oldest millennials are active collectors, the percentage that’s never owned cards at all jumps from 49% for all millennials to 56% for Gen Z.
