“Any time we have an opportunity to partner and align ourselves with amazing athletes, what we want to be able to do is celebrate those moments and celebrate those memories,” Turner said.
Fanatics’ athlete team and its head of athlete partnerships, former NBA agent Omar Wilkes, have begun working with athletes including San Antonio Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama and their teams at earlier stages to understand what the athlete wants their brand to be.
According to Bal, creating connections to young athletes gives Fanatics and Topps a tool perhaps more powerful than nostalgia: association. Nike is strongly associated with Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Fanatics and its card brands have the opportunity to align themselves with a new, larger generation of athletes as NIL deals help softball, volleyball and women’s basketball grow in both participation and viewership.
“It’s this amazing self-fulfilling prophecy, where if you get somebody dominant in it, who does a really good job of marketing themselves, that markets everything else,” Bal said. “For companies like Fanatics, they are in this awesome position where they can just support everyone because all they have to do is assess talent early on … and they’re probably pretty good at that.”
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