With the NBA preseason set to tip off in a week, Panini America, one of the storylines will be on the latest crop of talent to be brought the league this season, especially top draft pick Zion Williamson. As such, Williamson’s partners are revving up their own marketing plans for the former Duke player, including Panini America, the world’s largest licensed sports and entertainment collectibles company, which inked Williamson to an exclusive trading card agreement last month to feature Williamson’s only licensed college and NBA trading cards and autograph cards. His first officially licensed NBA autographs will release in October with the arrival of the 2019-20 NBA Hoops Basketball product, as well as Panini’s 25 additional NBA trading card products released during the season.
Cynopsis Sports spoke with Jason Howarth Vice President of Marketing for Panini America, about their plans for Williamson and the state of the trading card industry.
Howarth on the state of the trading card industry: The trading card category has never been healthier than it is right now. We’ve seen new consumers come into the category as our products reach more and more people through hobby stores, mass retail like Walmart and Target and online retailers, along with Casebreakers (community where people open up products via livestream). Our biggest challenge is demand is higher than supply right now because we are committed to maintaining the value of Panini trading products across all sports (NBA, NFL, EPL, NASCAR and Collegiate) which are built on scarcity – so we have to strike a very delicate balance.
On the biggest reason for optimism: With the increased popularity of trading cards we are seeing younger collectors come into the market – not just in the U.S. but other markets including China, Australia and Europe.
On Zion’s impact the business: JH: The global marketplace is really excited about this NBA Rookie Class including players like Ja Morant, RJ Barrett, Rue Hachimura (1st Japanese NBA Player) and Zion leads the way. The early marketplace for Zion with our Contenders Draft Picks product – where he and other athletes are featured in their collegiate uniforms has seen autographed versions of his trading cards selling on the secondary market anywhere from $800-$3,000 regularly. Zion is a generational athlete – in the truest sense, he has the potential to bring new collectors into the marketplace and to get people that haven’t thought about trading cards going out to try and get one of his Rookie cards.
On plans: We have been very deliberate with our approach beginning with announcing Zion as an exclusive autographed trading card athlete by timing it as we went into the Panini NBA Rookie Photo Shoot this August which consisted of several days of capturing content that we shared on our social platforms of him signing our trading cards and taking part in the photo shoot along with other rookies.
When we roll-out our marketing efforts for the 2019-20 NBA season you will see customized content that we have developed around each of the key individual rookies including Zion.
Our Panini Instant platform, our real-time direct to consumer platform that celebrates key events and milestones as they happen, will follow Zion throughout the season and we will create cards for him around each of his key performances along with other rookies so consumers can get his trading cards. You will also be able to collect Zion cards in our digital trading card app – Panini Dunk. As for the years ahead – we really can’t go into that too much without giving away our playbook, but we have plans to capitalize on the global market and Zion’s success
