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Happy Friday! It was a busy week keeping up with the Met Gala red carpet so we decided to write a sports x fashion breakdown to celebrate.
🎥🌅📱 New videos
👖⚾️💔 Ripped pants epidemic
👕🏭💰 Merch monopoly
SPORTSBALLTOK 🎥
Our stories are growing up! We’ve begun making videos on Instagram and TikTok (and even LinkedIn 🤓) for people to get behind the scenes with our stories and more explanation from both Claire and Riley. Find them wherever you doom scroll 🫡
Give us a follow and feel free to give any recommendations on what you might want to see next!
@riley.makes.charts Race horse breeding explained… 🐎🐎🐎 Learned a lot this week exploring rhe kentucky derby and how the horse world works. PG-13 but interesti... See more
LEARNING MODULE 💡
Who are you wearing?
Prada 🕶️
Gucci 👠
Dolce & Gabbana 👔
Fanatics ⚾️
It was an iconic fashion week in two arenas.
The Met Gala 📸 - Themed “The Garden of Time”, the always eye-popping event gave us outstanding looks on Monday
A baseball game ⚾️ between the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees
Baseball players are facing issues more daunting than fastballs in 2024: their pants are ripping. 👖
The unprecedented frequency - 4 confirmed rips - has led us down an interesting path of merchandise and uniforms in live sports.
Enter Fanatics, the biggest sports merchandise company you never knew about. 🏢
Since 2003, Fanatics has been building merchandise partnerships 🤝 with all 4 major sports leagues.
What does that mean? Well, Fanatics began as an e-commerce brand white-labeling team stores; essentially the Shopify of sports. For example, buying something from the Seattle Mariners MLB shop 🛍️ may look like the Mariners operate it but it’s Fanatics doing all the dirty work.
After digging their e-commerce claws into almost every team and league, Fanatics began expanding into manufacturing and licensing. From 2017-2019 they entered exclusive partnerships with each professional league to not only operate their online stores, but also create and distribute the gear. 🏭
What’s this have to do with ripped pants? We’re getting there.
In 2020 Fanatics owned all the e-commerce, licensing, manufacturing, and distribution in the MLB, NFL, NBA, and NHL. They turned from a Shopify into an Amazon of sports. This is where it gets interesting.
The obvious next step for the $31B tech/sports company is to make on-field jerseys for players. Why just have fans wearing your gear when you can have Shohei Ohtani do so as well? 🤔 So Fanatics struck a deal with Nike and the MLB to become the uniform provider for on-field players in 2020.
Fast forward to this season. Fanatics and Nike decided to switch from the traditional uniforms over to a new “lighter and more flexible” pattern 🎽 for players to use… You can guess what happens next.
Players begin to notice some… differences in the uniforms. They’re sheer, they’re thin, they’re screen printed rather than embroidered, and they’re inconsistently manufactured. 🙅
Players essentially went from wearing Vuori to SHEIN overnight.
And when there are 18-inch gashes in player uniforms, people start to notice and point fingers. Those fingers pointed at Fanatics and Nike, who then pointed at each other. 👉👈
It’s a classic case of choose your fighter.
Technically the whole kerfuffle is a Nike issue, and Fanatics has said it multiple times. Nike redesigned the uniforms that were signed off on by the league while Fanatics acted as a partner for distribution. End of story, right?
Fans don’t see it that way. Fanatics has a less-than-sterling reputation 💩 in the garment quality department and has even been sued for it in the past, leaving them standing on weak reputational footing with the sports enthusiasts.
Alas, the pants problem will likely be fixed in short order but it’s a canary in the coal mine 🦜 signaling the worst may be yet to come.
As Fanatics tightens its stranglehold on every piece of merchandise you can buy as a sports fan, they exert more control over the product and quality we fans receive.
We all remember the videos from this infamous party. It was the bash of the year in 2023 with the most eclectic and star-studded guest list we’ve ever seen. 🥳
Jay Z, Beyonce, Joel Embiid, James Cordon, Jack Harlow, Kim K, Ben Affleck, Tobias Harris, French Montana, Killian Mbappe, Kendall Jenner and countless others were in attendance.
Who could possibly host such an event that brings together pop culture, sports, and entertainment stars from around the world? 🌎
Michael Rubin.
And who is Michael Rubin? The CEO of Fanatics of course! The billionaire socialite has been rubbing elbows with the who’s who in entertainment for years, surely resulting in some term sheets for merchandising deals 📝 across the sports world.
I wonder if he was able to write off the party on taxes since some of his clients were there 🤔
Rubin and Fanatics have successfully built the infrastructure that powers the entire sports merchandise industry for better or worse. ⚙️ They have another uniform deal starting with the NHL next year and will likely expand to basketball and football after that; we’ll just have to wait and see if some of the major pants problems continue.
THIS PAST WEEK ⏮
NBA Playoffs 🏀
We’re officially into the second round of the playoffs. The Timberwolves and Knicks have been notably impressive so far, both of whom are winning the race to 16 victories 🏁
NHL Playoffs 🏒
New York, New York! Both in the NBA and NHL, the NY teams are impressing as the Rangers 🏒 continue their unbeaten streak in the playoffs. The stadium transition crew isn’t too happy about switching MSG over and over again but it’s a small price to pay for playoff success.
Thank you all for reading and enjoy the playoffs!
— Claire and Riley
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