Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—S.D.N.Y.: Trading card purchaser case against Fanatics and major sports leagues dismissed, (Mar 25, 2026)

By Kenneth H. Ryesky, M.B.A., J.D.

Allegations as to the future prices of fully licensed trading cards were too hypothetical and conjectural to support standing.

The federal district court in New York City has dismissed a putative class action complaint brought against the NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball, and a sports trading card purveyor by five trading card collectors alleging Sherman Act violations. The card purchasers alleged that they paid higher prices for fully licensed NBA, NFL, and MLB Trading Cards as a result of anticompetitive practices. Because the named plaintiffs had not purchased any NBA Trading Cards or NFL Trading Cards when they filed the complaint, they lacked individual Article III standing to raise claims with respect to those cards. As to future injury, the card purchasers failed to show how the allegedly anticompetitive conduct would have any bearing on whether they will pay supracompetitive prices for trading cards, as none of these allegations address price at all (Scaturo v. Fanatics, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-02202-LTS-VF (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 23, 2026)).

Background. Sports trading cards are printed cards featuring the name, image, and likeness (NIL) of athletes have long been in demand as collectable items; collectors of such items often strive to acquire entire sets of any given series of trading cards, often by swapping of duplicates among fellow collectors. During the mid-to-late nineteenth century, they were packaged as accompanying lagniappes to induce customers to purchase cigarettes. By the twentieth century, manufacturers of chewing gum and other confectionaries had begun to similarly use such cards to market their wares. In the 1950's, Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. added information regarding the athletes' professional history and playing statistics to the trading cards they packaged with their chewing gum.

Over the years, sports trading cards evolved beyond a marketing lagniappe to promote the sales of bubble gum or cigarettes, and became a stand-alone commodity in their own right. Moreover, the card sets included not only individual cards for the athletes themselves, but also special commemorative cards for, among other things, various events of recent and not-so-recent history, memorials for deceased athletes or other personalities in the sport, and checklists for collectors to tally the completeness of their collections. The sports trading cards purveyed by Topps Chewing Gum, Inc. and its successor entities (Topps) achieved dominance in the multi-billion dollar U.S. market, and familiar public recognition, during the second half of the twentieth century.

Producing sports trading cards entails more than the complexities of the printing plant processes on the factory floor. Long before the offset presses are inked up, intellectual property rights need to be secured, not only for the athletes' individual NIL, but also for the team and league logos and apparel pictured on the cards. The professional sports leagues have long found such licensure to be a source of income over and above the revenues received through ticket sales and receipts from in-stadium advertisers; professional baseball, football, and basketball leagues in the United States each have organized an affiliated subsidiary to handle the legal and practical aspects of their respective intellectual property licensure. The athletes' labor unions have done similar.

OneTeam Partners, LLC (OneTeam), a joint venture between the licensing entities for the professional baseball and football athletes, licenses the NIL for the athletes who play those sports.

In 2009, Italy-based trading card producer Panini S.p.A., which had purveyed football (soccer) league trading cards in the European market, entered the U.S. sports trading card market through its U.S. affiliates (collectively, Panini). Fanatics, Inc. and its related subsidiary entities (collectively, Fanatics), initially a purveyor of sports apparel, expanded its product offering to sports trading cards in the 2010's. Fanatics acquired Topps in 2022.

In March 2025, five individual card collectors filed a putative class action lawsuit against Fanatics, the league and players' union entities of professional basketball (collectively, the NBA entities), professional football (collectively, the NFL entities), professional baseball (collectively, the MLB entities), and OneTeam, alleging illegal conspiracies, monopolization, and attempted monopolization in violation of the Sherman Act. All defendants moved for dismissal. A first amended complaint was filed on May 8, 2025.

Past injury. The court found that the named plaintiffs failed to plausibly plead past injury. Here, the licenses negotiated by OneTeam with non-party Panini for the basketball and football cards remained effective until October 2025, accordingly, Fanatics did not and could not have legally purveyed those cards on May 8, 2025, the day the operative complaint was filed. One of the named plaintiff individuals asserted in papers opposing the defendants' motions that he had purchased a particular card in early October 2025, but this was done without further amendment of the already amended complaint. The judge noted that even if the purchase had been made before the operative complaint, there was no mention of the price actually paid for that particular card.

As for the baseball cards, Fanatics did have valid intellectual property rights before May 8, 2025, and while two individual plaintiffs claimed to have purchased cards from Fanatics, the price overcharge claims were in the form of two-line graphs that compared prices charged from year to year by Topps and Panini. There were, however, insufficient allegations to link the prices and products represented in the graph illustrations to products actually purchased by the individuals. Here, the court found that the plaintiffs "do not allege adequately that they purchased cards at inflated prices. Rather, Plaintiffs' allegations of injury are entirely conclusory and speculative."

The court thus concluded that the plaintiffs did not plausibly plead past injury, and therefore lacked standing to bring those claims.

Future injury. The judge ruled that the named plaintiffs failed to plausibly plead future injury. The plaintiffs alleged in their opposition to the motion that "Defendants' anticompetitive conduct has already inflated Trading Card prices and will continue to do so as Defendants continue to cement the Fanatics monopoly." Further allegations in the opposition documents included anticompetitive conduct towards third-party distributors such as card shops and big box stores. The operative class action complaint defined the class as "persons or entities in the United States that purchased MLB Trading Cards, NFL Trading Cards, or NBA Trading Cards directly from one of the Defendants … [emphasis supplied]." The conclusory allegations failed to support the theory of imminent harm asserted by plaintiffs.

Also alleged was that Fanatics and the other defendants inflicted anticompetitive harm upon Panini. These allegations, which made no mention of prices paid, were not shown to have "any bearing on whether named Plaintiffs will pay supracompetitive prices for trading cards" in the future.

The Panini case. The court rejected the analogy between the instant case and another case decided by the same judge in the same court, brought by Panini against Fanatics [Panini America, Inc. v. Fanatics, Inc., No. 23-CV-9714-LTS-VF, 2025 WL 753954 (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 10, 2025)], in which many similar allegations survived dismissal. That case was not controlling, was plausibly pleaded, and was found by the judge to be misconstrued by the plaintiffs.

The Case is No. 1:25-cv-02202-LTS-VF.

Judge: Swain, L.

Attorneys: A. Luke Smith (Radice Law Firm, P.C.) for Robert Scaturo. Amanda P. Reeves (Latham & Watkins LLP) for Fanatics, Inc.

Companies: Fanatics, Inc.

Cases: Antitrust NewYorkNews