FIFA and Fanatics have signed a long-term exclusive license allowing Topps, owned by Fanatics, to produce trading cards, stickers and trading card games for the World Cup and other FIFA events starting in 2031.
Financial terms weren’t made available, but a source familiar with the deal says the length “spans multiple [World Cup] cycles.”
“Across the sports landscape, we see that Fanatics are driving massive innovation in collectibles that provides fans with a new, meaningful way to engage with their favorite teams and with their favorite players,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in a statement.
“So, from FIFA’s point of view, we can globalize that fan engagement precisely thanks to our global tournament portfolio. And this provides another important commercial revenue stream that we channel back, as always, into the game, into football.”
The agreement ends Panini’s decades-long FIFA World Cup sticker license. Apart from the United States-hosted 1994 World Cup, Panini produced FIFA World Cup stickers and cards from 1970 through the 2030 edition of the tournament.