The National Football League is reportedly the largest investor in sports merchandising platform Fanatics’ most recent funding round.
The NFL invested $320 million into the $1.5 billion funding round, per TechCrunch. The new funding would bring Fanatics’ valuation to $27 billion.
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This isn’t the NFL’s first investment into Fanatics. The league also invested in at least the startup’s $1 billion Series D in September 2017, according to Crunchbase, though it’s unclear how much the league contributed in that round, which was led by the SoftBank Vision Fund.
Other big names in the sports world invested in Fanatics’ latest round, including the MLB, the NHL, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the NFL Players Association, per TechCrunch.
Fanatics is primarily known for selling sports merchandise and collectibles including jerseys and other apparel. It’s acquired several other online sports apparel and memorabilia companies as well to grow its business. But the company has also expanded beyond that to other areas of sports fandom. Last year it acquired trading cards company Topps, and launched Candy Digital, which sells non-fungible tokens.
Fanatics has raised at least $4.2 billion in funding, per Crunchbase, from investors including Silver Lake and Insight Partners.
Illustration: Li-Anne Dias
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