A leading sports brand is partnering with a top sports and entertainment company to grow the brand and fan base and bring non-fungible tokens to the market.
What Happened: A partnership between World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE:WWE) and Fanatics was announced Monday.
The partnership will cover e-commerce, licensed merchandise, physical trading cards, digital trading cards and NFT trading cards.
“We believe this multi-platform partnership will set a new standard for WWE e-commerce, apparel and merchandise, while providing our fans globally with more ways than ever to engage with WWE and our superstars,” WWE CEO Vince McMahon said.
The WWE Shop will be reintroduced as a “rapid e-commerce and mobile destination” as part of the deal.
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Why It’s Important: The partnership with Fanatics could help strengthen and grow the fan base of WWE, which is facing increasing competition from AEW.
Candy Digital will be a primary NFT partner for WWE under the deal. The release said the company will make NFTs featuring top WWE moments and stars.
Several wrestlers including John Cena, The Undertaker and Bret Hart have released NFTs with limited success.
NFTs covering WWE wrestlers of past and present could become a huge collectible item for fans and possibly designed as trading cards, similar to ones done by Topps in the past, or feature video moments, similar to NBA Top Shot and UFC moments from Dapper Labs.
WWE Price Action, per Benzinga Pro: World Wrestling Entertainment shares are trading down 1.18% to $60.34 on Monday at publication versus a 52-week range of $46.81 to $70.72.
