The NFLPA – through its marketing and licensing arm NFL Players Inc. – renewed a bevy of agreements through its deal with Fanatics, inking 16 sublicense agreements that include the likes of: Aminco; Dallas Cowboys Merchandising; Fathead; FBF Originals; Forever Collectibles; The Lang Companies; McFarlane Toys; MBI; Nike; The Northwest Company; Outerstuff; Photo File; Stahl’s; Team Spirit Store; Wild Sports; and Wincraft. In addition, the NFLPA and Fanatics inked four brand new sublicensing agreements, adding the likes of adidas for co-brand collegiate jerseys, t-shirts, fleece and headwear; Komar for children’s sleepwear; Party Animal Inc. for mini-figurines, cups and plug-in LED lights; and Strideline for socks.
As the NFLPA continues to spread its wings with new partnerships, Cynopsis Sports asked Steve Scebelo, VP of Licensing and Business Development at NFL Players Inc. about that partnership with Fanatics and the unique opportunities of partnering with the organization.
Scebelo on opportunities: The opportunities are there and our biz dev group remains busy reaching out to companies that we think are making really interesting products that are not yet part of our portfolio to companies that are coming to us with proposals. We are still seeing growth potential in apparel, the collectibles as well as in the mobile/digital/technology space. So there is plenty of room for growth and I think the accessibility of the players continues to work in our favor. There is a consumer demand for more products featuring the players themselves and for a deeper number of players.
On assets: We have, as an element of all of our licensing agreements, what we call a marketing commitment. It’s different from what a lot of licensors call a marketing spend, which they often refer to as cooperative dollars. We don’t do that. We earmark the dollars that are committed to market the products to be spent directly with players. That’s the key to the whole pitch in that our players are accessible and want to be involved and help promote them. A lot of licenses don’t have the personalities and faces behind it. We do.
On the Fanatics deal: We announced our exclusive licensing agreement with Fanatics in April of last year. When we announced it, like anytime anyone does anything new, there were skeptics and questions about how it would work. We had a lot of people coming back to us 1) stating that they wanted to work with us directly or 2) wondering if we were going away. Not at all the case. But since then, a lot of companies have seen that it is feasible and viable to work with Fanatics through this model through which they would sublicense those rights back to those companies. There has been no substantial falloff as a result.
On new endeavors: The one thing we have been focusing some time and energy to is called the OneTeam Collective, which we are using as a tool to pursue opportunities to work with early-stage and start-up companies that otherwise wouldn’t be able to come on board as licensees. We’ve announced a few of our relationships, with the first one being Whoop, and I’m excited to see the benefits of that kick in.
