{"id":832094,"date":"2026-03-25T01:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T01:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/832094\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T01:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T01:23:14","slug":"lawsuit-alleging-fanatics-leagues-monopolizing-sports-card-industry-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/832094\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit alleging Fanatics, leagues monopolizing sports card industry dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New York federal judge dismissed all counts Monday in a lawsuit filed against Fanatics, the NFL, the NBA, MLB, their respective players associations and OneTeam (the commercial arm of the players associations) accusing them of conspiring to engage in a campaign to monopolize the trading card market for each of the three sports leagues to increase the price of cards for consumers.<\/p>\n

The five plaintiffs<\/a> \u2014 Robert Scaturo, Scott Bubnick, Joseph Davidov, Steven Mardakhaev, Jonathan Madar \u2014 citing numerous portions of the antitrust lawsuit filed by Panini against Fanatics as an argument in many aspects, claimed they had paid too much for the cards as a result of Fanatics\u2019 attempt to monopolize the card market. The court ruled against the claims, saying, \u201cNone of the named plaintiffs adequately allege that they have overpaid or will imminently overpay for trading cards sold by defendants.\u201d<\/p>\n

The court also noted that at the time the lawsuit was filed (March 2025), it was Panini that held licenses for the NBA and NFL cards. Topps, owned by Fanatics, didn\u2019t produce NBA-licensed trading cards until October 2025 and doesn\u2019t take over the NFL license for cards until April 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only did no named plaintiff purchase such a trading card from defendants prior to the filing of the FAC (the lawsuit), but it was actually impossible for any consumer to do so,\u201d Judge Laura Taylor Swain wrote in the ruling.<\/p>\n

Related to Topps\u2019 licensed MLB cards, the court ruled the plaintiffs failed to allege they purchased cards at inflated prices. The plaintiffs provided a chart comparing prices for Topps\u2019 licensed cards and Panini\u2019s unlicensed products, but the court said the plaintiffs didn\u2019t \u201cexplain whether the difference in prices was traceable to extraneous factors, such as production costs or quality differences, or whether the difference was traceable to defendants\u2019 anticompetitive conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fanatics said in a statement to The Athletic: \u201cWe said from the start that this was a baseless and fundamentally flawed lawsuit since Fanatics was being accused of raising prices on cards we didn\u2019t even produce. The court agreed and ruled that the plaintiffs did not even have standing to sue. We are happy the court has now ruled the complaint legally deficient and dismissed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

John Radice, the plaintiffs\u2019 attorney, told The Athletic: \u201cPlaintiffs are assessing the Court\u2019s dismissal without prejudice and considering all options.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an ongoing lawsuit, rival trading card manufacturer Panini is accusing Fanatics of anticompetitive behavior and monopolization of the sports card industry after Fanatics acquired exclusive licensing rights from the NBA and NFL previously held by Panini to pair with its exclusive licenses for MLB, the Premier League, F1, WWE and others.<\/p>\n

Fanatics has denied the claims in Panini\u2019s suit and alleged in an ongoing countersuit<\/a> Panini embarked on a \u201cprotracted, unlawful, and deceitful campaign of unfair trade practices, strong-arm tactics, and tortious misconduct\u201d in an attempt to force Fanatics to pay an extortionate amount for Panini to terminate its licenses early in 2022.<\/p>\n

A New York federal judge ruled March 10, 2025, that much of Panini\u2019s case against Fanatics, including claims of anticompetitive behavior and monopolization of the sports card industry, could proceed. The case dismissed Monday was filed March 17, 2025, one week after the Panini-Fanatics case ruling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New York federal judge dismissed all counts Monday in a lawsuit filed against Fanatics, the NFL, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":832095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,1785,6,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-832094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-memorabilia-collectibles","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-sports-business"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116287203092474370","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/832095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}