The Most Ambitious Crossover Event in Antitrust History

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

I have good news for you, the common sports fan. You were worried that Fanatics did not have enough ways of selling you sports products. You despaired because buying merchandise—both Fanatics’ own and products it retails—did not satiate your appetite to do e-commerce with this company. You fretted because Fanatics’ fantasy sports games and sports betting platform did not give you enough of a portal into the company. You cried out in anguish because Fanatics’ purchase of Topps, the biggest company in sports trading cards, still left you wanting for more Fanatics. Now you can rest easily, because the last thing in sports that you could not do through Fanatics has reached its destiny and become Fanatics-able.

Indeed, you can now—or soon, anyway—buy tickets to games through Fanatics. And there’s even more good news: The company is bringing you this service by way of a partnership with Ticketmaster, a division of live event industry–dominating company Live Nation. I know many people who have longed for more opportunities to interact with Ticketmaster, and now, thanks to a new partnership, they will have it. The missing piece has fallen into place.

Fanatics and Ticketmaster are in business together, they announced Wednesday in a story in Sportico. It’s a big deal, in that it is a deal between two companies that are big. Fanatics and Ticketmaster have each made themselves the one inescapable player in at least one part of the business of sports: Fanatics in merchandising and licensing, Ticketmaster in, well, ticketing. That they would become collaborators feels like the most natural thing in the world. The product they produce will be fine and easy to use, even if it does not fill a need for you, a sports fan.

Ticketmaster and Fanatics are a fitting match in another way. Both of them get a lot of bad press, but the issues that get them bad press aren’t the most serious problems they pose.

Ticketmaster got raked over the coals in Congress because it had a bad rollout for Taylor Swift tickets in 2022, but it usually delivers fans’ tickets in a seamless fashion. To buy a concert or soccer game ticket on Ticketmaster is to pay some dubious fees and then receive your ticket promptly and securely.

Fanatics has had lots of PR problems stemming from viral moments of faulty products or poor customer service, and it had a part in last year’s Major League Baseball uniforms, which got bad reviews. But most Fanatics products are just fine. I have a Pittsburgh Pirates jersey that I like. The company responded promptly to complaints about the uniforms. My trading card–obsessed friends have had mostly good experiences with iconic brand Topps since Fanatics bought it. The recent nationwide search for a one-of-a-kind baseball card was a fun story, which will soon end with an 11-year-old making life-changing money and Fanatics donating its auction house’s commission to Los Angeles fire relief. (Some baseball card people think the story is too good to be true. I think it’s legit, partly because the ramifications of getting caught rigging it do not seem worthwhile.)

Not that two huge companies don’t deserve scrutiny for their actual products, but Fanatics and Ticketmaster warrant the most attention for how they’re structured. They have entrenched themselves atop different industries using tactics that might be legal (though the U.S. government hasn’t agreed, in Ticketmaster’s case) but don’t seem healthy or good for anyone outside of the two businesses. The companies will now support each other, with Fanatics directing ticket buyers to Ticketmaster and the two sides coming to undisclosed financial terms to make all of the numbers work. It’s the kind of partnership that warrants a skeptical posture.

Start with Ticketmaster. The company has been a good punching bag in a post–“Eras” tour world, but the issue isn’t any one concert rollout or even its fees, which do not seem that high compared with its peers. The problem with Ticketmaster is the one the Justice Department focused on last May, when it filed a 124-page lawsuit against its parent, Live Nation. The company that owns Ticketmaster also controls a lot of music venues, and the government alleges that it has used that control to screw over both musical artists and fans.

Most classically, the Justice Department said that Live Nation pressures artists to hire Live Nation as a show promoter and sell concert tickets on Ticketmaster, lest the artist want to risk losing access to venues. I have no clue if a Trumpified Department of Justice still cares about this sort of thing or not. The lawsuit remains open. But I don’t know anyone who believes the live event industry is in desperate need of more Ticketmaster in more places.

Fanatics exists in a similar place. The company draws the most attention for its consumer-facing products, but a more fundamental problem is the variety of hats Fanatics wears at the same time. Fanatics is the most important licensing partner of every major North American sports league, not only making products with those brands’ marks but often weighing in on who else gets to license the logos and names of major teams and leagues. Fanatics makes roughly half of what it sells, with the rest coming from its role as a retailer of other brands’ products. It doesn’t require granular antitrust expertise to see the problem there: Anyone who wants to make a licensed sports product might feel pressure to sell that product via Fanatics, at terms favorable to Fanatics, rather than have a contentious relationship with a licensing gatekeeper.

Fanatics is already omnipresent in merchandise and collectibles, and it has its own foothold in fantasy sports and betting. Now it has another business line, ticketing, to make itself an even less appealing company to offend. Why be on the wrong side of the one-stop shop for sports? The company’s goal is to make its app “a daily habit,” its chief financial officer told Sportico in the piece announcing the Ticketmaster deal, and explained it like this: “So you wake up every day, you check the scores from last night. This will also allow you to buy your favorite merch, play games and have an on-ramp into our betting experience and our collectibles experience.”

That sounds good for Fanatics, and it has a certain utility to the fan who wants to limit their amount of passwords or clicks and still be able to buy stuff and bet on games. But I would prefer that no one company serve as the pass-through for every interaction I like to have with my favorite sports teams, including attending games. I just don’t think that company’s top priority is giving me a healthier and more financially efficient relationship with the teams I care about. We’ll see how many sports fans agree.