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Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin engages with collectors on show floor, shares vision for sports collectible hobby
ROSEMONT, Ill. – As Michael Rubin checked out a memorabilia case, his phone rang.
On the other end was former NFL legend Tom Brady.
Rubin, the Fanatics CEO, stepped aside for a few minutes. It was business as usual.
Then it was right back to looking at cases on the show floor and snapping selfies with collectors. The multi-billionaire was in his element amongst the masses at the jam-packed National Sports Collectors Convention (NSCC) on Thursday.
In an exclusive, impromptu interview with Sports Collectors Digest, Rubin and Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan fielded questions about The National and Fanatics’ vision for the future of the sports card hobby.
“It’s incredible to see so much passion and enthusiasm,” Rubin said about Thursday’s crowd at The National. “You come in here and there’s so many incredible collectors who just live, breathe, eat the hobby, and how’s that not make you so happy and excited? By the way, we were just talking about it a minute ago, you just think about all the things we’re doing. We’re just getting started with all the plans that we have and there’s an incredible foundation and so much to do.”
Added Mahan: “I think when you see this kind of passion, this kind of turnout, it gives you a lot of confidence for where you’re going. The number of people that have come up to each one of us, excited about the things we’re doing and us knowing that we’re just getting started, that this is just the beginning, really excited.”
Rubin has been a prominent figure in the hobby since Fanatics acquired the rights to produce baseball, football and basketball cards, and then bought Topps a year and a half ago. Following that landmark acquisition, Fanatics has purchased PWCC Marketplace and launched several new platforms with Fanatics Live and Fanatics Events being announced recently.
Fanatics Live, which debuted at The National, features exclusive livestream content designed to sell cards and collectibles as well as transform the digital shopping experience.
“I’m really excited about it,” Rubin said. “First of all, we work with thousands of athletes today that we want to get more involved with the hobby. Historically, athletes have signed cards, signed memorabilia, but they weren’t excited about it. The fans here are the best fans in the world and so we have to give a platform for athletes, celebrities to [connect] with fans. You look at Fanatics Live, so many incredible breakers that are growing the hobby, that are creating great content, having them better connect with collectors. We have 100 million fans in our database and so to be able to expose what we’re doing to 100 million fans — and by the way, we grow by 10 to 20 million fans every year — that are customers of Fanatics. I think we can do a lot to bring the general sports fan into the hobby and then to really make the hobby a lot bigger.”
With Fanatics Live getting into the breaking business, Rubin and his team are trying to help clean up a controversial side of the hobby where numerous breakers have been caught on video stealing cards or scamming collectors.
When Mahan came up with the idea of starting Fanatics Live, he made it a point to tell Rubin they have to “fix all these issues.”
“Integrity matters,” Mahan said. “People have to have confidence in what we’re doing here. And I think there’s a lot of misperceptions that we want to clean up. We want to lead with integrity. We want to lead with doing things the right way. Whether it comes to something that we can just make better, we’re going to do that, which is why you’ve seen us focus on a lot of different things in the ecosystem. And you think about things like more transparency, more information, more authenticity, we’re going to be doing all of those things.
“Ultimately, we are so laser-focused on the collector experience, which we know if the collector experience at each and every point is great, we’re going to have a great industry. Integrity, transparency are such a big part of it. We’ve got a lot more that we’re going to roll out and announce.”
Rubin has a grandiose vision of what he’d like Fanatics Events to be like when it fully launches early next year. The new division will launch the trading card giant into card and autograph shows.
“Fanatics Events is going to be much bigger than just a collectible show; that will kind of be a portion of it,” Rubin said. “First of all, we love what they’re doing at The National. There’s a thousand shows in North America; we love that. We want those shows to flourish, to thrive, to do great.
“When we think about what we want to do at Fanatics Events, we think about, how do we take the best of what happens at a collectibles show together with how do we do the best footwear launches? How do we do the best trading card launches there? How do we do gambling activations? And then take the greatest athletes in the world and not having them signing things, but having them do different things with the fans, very interactive with the fans. Take what you see at the Super Bowl or an All-Star Game, take the fan fest and integrate that. Think about a Comic-Con of sports. This is great, but we need to do a lot more than that. We want to build upon it.”
— Greg Bates is a freelance contributor and editor-at-large for Sports Collectors Digest. He can be reached at gregabates@gmail.com.
