Ah, “consumer economics,” my dear friend. No two words elicit such a potent combination of disgust and confusion as this catch-all phrase; one that covers all manner of commercial sins. And what sins are those? Well, do you want an authentic Aaron Judge World Baseball Classic jersey to arrive multiple months after the tournament ends? That will be $419.99.
Ripping Fanatics, the sports merchandise monopoly to end them all, is the easiest thing since inventing sliced bread. You cannot purchase an authentic NFL, NBA, NHL or MLB jersey that is not Fanatics-manufactured. The quality is… questionable, at times. The price tags are gobsmackingly high. For NFL, MLB and NBA jerseys, the prices range between $120 and $200 depending on the item. Hockey jerseys are never less than $200. Like I said, ripping Fanatics is like a knife through butter.
But we can do better than that. Much has been said about the Fanatics monopoly and how Congress should step in for the sake of the consumer — you know, like what the antitrust laws are designed to do — and they should. But they won’t. Save for the separate problem that the Sherman Antitrust Act was written in 1890 and wasn’t really designed for the ultra-digital age of techno-empires, American sports leagues are legal monopolies. It’s no shock that their merchandising arm is one, too.
Little discussed but gargantuanly important, the Supreme Court ruled in 1922 that the Sherman Antitrust Act did not apply to Major League Baseball, a decision that has been interpreted to protect the four major North American leagues ever since. These leagues are cultural institutions that have cultivated an exclusive right to our interest in particular sports. They have intentionally curated a calendar that squashes all opposition, particularly emergent women’s leagues like the WNBA and PWHL, who have a hard time getting primetime TV slots in the face of an oversaturated sports calendar.
Yet the demand for their product is so consistent that they are guaranteed profitability regardless of performance. You know, like drug cartels!
It’s why we discuss an MLB salary cap leading to a lockout. It’s why we care so much about tanking in the NBA. The product gets worse because everyone’s pocketbook is already protected. It’s frankly an economic disaster, but American culture wouldn’t have it any other way. We want the best players playing against the best players in one place. Horribly, there’s no other way to do it.
We also want to dress like our favorite players as a symbol of our support for our favorite teams. Jerseys are symbols of solidarity and of status within the fan in-group. If I see someone on the street in a Drake Maye or Jayson Tatum jersey, that’s sick. When I was perusing the Fanatics sites to check prices for this article, I saw MLBShop had restocked those awesome Green Roman Anthony jerseys for $179.99. In one of the greatest moments of irony in my life, I considered buying one. I’m still considering buying one. It’s like some kind of sick joke.
That’s the thing about jerseys: we want them, and we are willing to pay for them. Those whose solution to the problem of Fanatics’ monopoly is “just don’t buy them” are not being realistic. The most popular jerseys routinely sell out. Most people are not even given a chance to not buy them. If I wanted to go on NFLShop and not buy a Division Rivals Drake Maye jersey right now, I’d be out of luck. They don’t have any for me to not buy!
Fanatics — and by extension Nike, whose creative monopoly in several leagues has led to jerseys that, frankly, are lacking in innovative style — is a function of this interest and the inherent monopolistic spirit of American sports. If we want to fix it, we can’t go crying that they’ve unfairly gained control of the entire jersey market. We have to think outside the box.
Sure, it wasn’t always this way, but this situation is just leagues getting smarter. It is way too efficient to centrally plan and design jersey inventories because the demand is so variable. I can’t imagine anyone is rushing to buy a Utah Jazz jersey right now, but Detroit Pistons jerseys are probably flying off the shelves like you’ve never seen. Similarly, the demand is so concentrated; I will never buy a Charlotte Hornets jersey, nor will my friend from Denver ever buy a Seattle Seahawks jersey. These are hyper-specific submarkets within the larger structure, so planning the production accordingly is efficient, cheap and gloriously profitable.
If we want things to get better, we have to go after the root cause. Sports leagues are monopolies and always will be, but allowing them to vertically integrate their merchandising through a single partner is the issue. They can only do that because they hold exclusive copyright to their brands. Are you seeing it now? Let’s go after the copyrights.
This would take some serious lawyering and quite the legal interpretation of copyright laws, some of the most brutal and lucrative ones in the business. But some of these teams are rather old, and copyright is supposed to expire after a certain period of time. If we could somehow concoct a case that argued these brands are old enough and culturally important enough that they are in the public domain, we would have solved the merchandising crisis with just a smattering of anarchy.
Look, I’m not saying that’s realistic. I’m sure my lawyer mother is reading this in horror, and these leagues would rather relocate to Mars than give up their billion-dollar copyright controls. But short of congressional intervention that isn’t coming, that’s the solution I’ve cooked up. Just saying “break up the monopoly” has never held water in the sports industry, so we have to be more creative. The law, while complex, is actually quite creative.
Other brands could suddenly run wild. Instead of occasional collabs, there would be rampant competition. Which leads to derivative solution number two: let’s change the culture of sports merch.
You can’t control demand for a product — that’s like… the whole thesis of capitalism. Demand is influenced by too many factors to understand, and people currently want jerseys. They have wanted jerseys for a long time, and my educated prediction is that they will continue to want them. But what if we all got together and decided that jerseys were lame?
The era of dressing up like your favorite player is over. Enter: high fashion. Like the NBA players who reacted to David Stern’s sideline dress code by becoming the coolest dudes on the planet by wearing $5000 Louis Vuitton jackets, we’re following their lead. Now, you aren’t cool if you wear a jersey; you’re cool if you wear a creatively designed custom bomber jacket. You’re cool if you stitched together four different Celtics hoodies you thrifted and made one awesome super hoodie. You’re cool if you knit your own Bruins hat. That’s so cool, I should do that. We should all do that!
Everyone wants to be cool, so let’s stop letting Fanatics tell us what is and isn’t fashionable. If the government won’t save us from the monopoly, then we will resist with the coolest, most creative fits imaginable. You are cool, I am cool, sports are cool. Fanatics is not cool.
