Youth baseball platform Perfect Game on Thursday entered into a multiyear agreement with Fanatics to distribute trading cards, collectibles and memorabilia.
Perfect Game is known for putting on youth baseball tournaments and now runs around 10,000 events annually both in the U.S. and internationally, according to a Perfect Game spokesperson.
Fanatics will have exclusive rights to manufacture, market and sell trading cards and other collectibles of Perfect Game players. The initial range of merchandise will be introduced later in 2024.
The partnership comes on the heels of Perfect Game adding 21 former and current Major League Baseball players as investors in early April. Some of the new investors include Mo Vaughn, Salvador Perez, Tim Lincecum and Trevor Hoffman.
The investment from the former and current players and the Fanatics partnership is part of a large pool of money being funneled into youth sports. Unrivaled Sports, which was started by pro sports owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer, has been buying sports properties and recently added Under the Lights, a national youth flag football league, to its portfolio.
The agreement opens a window for collectors to acquire memorabilia of future MLB stars in the early stages of their careers. Kevin Herlihy, senior director of business operations at Perfect Game, told Sportico the partnership can bring an “entirely new product line” to fans.
“That window for the (baseball) collector is much longer than it is in other sports … the actual development and identification of those young players is happening in Perfect Game right now,” Herlihy said over the phone.
Fanatics declined to comment. Financial terms and a more specific length of the partnership were not disclosed.
