Team USA, LA28 Tap Fanatics for Wide-Ranging Olympics Deal
Team USA and the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, LA28, have signed a wide-ranging partnership with Fanatics that will put the world’s largest seller of licensed sports merchandise in charge of e-commerce, select apparel/collectibles, and physical retail locations associated with the 2028 Summer Games.
The agreement is between Fanatics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Properties, the joint venture between Team USA and LA28 that is responsible for the country’s Olympic rights in the run-up to the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic games. Fanatics already had an existing e-commerce relationship with Team USA, which will continue through 2028.
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It’s the latest deal that Michael Rubin’s company has signed regarding the Olympics, a valuable partner as Fanatics looks to expand its business overseas. Last October the company inked a partnership with the International Olympic Committee to build the IOC’s first-ever global e-commerce platform, a deal that gave it some rights surrounding the 2024 Summer Games in Paris and the Winter Games in Milan-Cortina.
Terms of this partnership weren’t disclosed. The deal has three main parts:
Apparel/Collectible–Fanatics is gaining new rights to make and sell a new host of LA28 and Team USA apparel. Nike (NYSE: NKE) and Ralph Lauren (NYSE: RL) have traditionally been the dominant brands selling licensed fan gear, and Fanatics will begin to play a larger role there, particularly around “hot market” products, which are designed, produced and sold immediately after big moments. This also includes collectibles, an area of focus for Fanatics.
E-commerce–Fanatics has run Team USA’s online store since 2009, and that will continue through 2028. The IOC deal inked last year gave it e-commerce rights to LA28, plus the 2024 Summer Games in France and the 2026 Winter Games in Italy.
Physical retail–Fanatics will operate the brick-and-mortar shops during the 2028 Games at official venues and other locations around Los Angeles. This will be an Olympics first for Fanatics—it is not doing the physical retail in Paris or Milan-Cortina, but it has done other international events like the recent UEFA competitions.
Fanatics continues to scoop up e-commerce, product and physical retail rights to the biggest teams, leagues and governing bodies across international sports. The company currently has e-commerce rights for 129 of the 152 teams across the major five U.S. leagues, and operates on-site shops for 39 of them. That’s on top of a handful of new business verticals that include NFTs, trading cards and—soon—sports betting.
The LA28/Team USA joint venture is a typical Olympics set-up that prevents the host’s national team and the local organizing committee from competing for partnership. All of Team USA’s roughly 20 major sponsorships expired after the Tokyo Summer Games, giving the joint venture an opportunity to sell for the next two Olympic cycles, culminating in the 2028 event. So far the venture has signed foundational partnerships—deals that can be worth around $200 million—with Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL), Comcast (Nasdaq: CMSCA) and Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), plus smaller agreements with Deloitte, Nike, Ralph Lauren and Hershey’s.
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