Five months after reaching a licensing agreement to sell baseball trading cards, Fanatics Inc. is buying the company that previously had the license for 70 years.
Jacksonville-based Fanatics agreed to buy the trading card business of Topps Inc. for $500 million, according to reports Jan. 4 by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC.
Fanatics in August reached licensing deals with Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association to take over the baseball card deal from Topps.
The agreement with Major League Baseball was not scheduled to take effect until 2025, when the league’s contract with Topps expires. By buying the Topps assets, Fanatics takes over the business three years early.
The Wall Street Journal said Fanatics’ deal with Topps will include contracts with several professional soccer organizations and Formula One auto racing.
The newspaper, citing unnamed sources, said the revenue of the businesses being acquired by Fanatics was about $550 million last year.
CNBC, also citing unnamed sources, said the deal does not include Topps’ candy and gift card businesses.
Topps was planning to go public in August by merging with a blank check company, but that plan was terminated when it lost the baseball card contract to Fanatics.
Wall Street has been speculating for several years that Fanatics eventually will go public. After a series of investors injected more capital into the business last year, financial news outlets said the estimated value of Fanatics is about $18 billion.
Fanatics was founded in 1995 by brothers Alan and Mitchell Trager with a single store in the Orange Park Mall.
The Tragers sold the company in 2011 and it now is part of a Philadelphia-based holding company called Kynetic.