Fanatics Launches Athletes vs. Celebs vs. Fans Event With $1M Prize
Fanatics is the latest company to try its hand at what's become a growing trend: competitions that pit athletes, celebrities and fans against each other.
Michael Rubin's company on Tuesday announced the launch of Fanatics Games. To be played over three days at Fanatics Fest in New York City next month, the competition will feature 100 competitors—50 athletes and celebrities, and 50 fans—in non-contact competitions like golf shot accuracy, basketball shooting and soccer scoring. Tom Brady, Kevin Durant, Tiffany Haddish, Druski, Liv Morgan and Logan Paul are among those already committed to participating.
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The strategy is leaning partially on the popularity of Pros vs. Joes, which matched fans against famous athletes, and also on the success of MrBeast, who made mass competition a staple of his rise to YouTube stardom. These unofficial celebrity-driven sporting events have drawn the attention of both fans and new-age sports streamers. Netflix's first live sporting event wasn't NFL or even WWE, it was a gimmick featuring pro golfers and F1 drivers playing eight holes in souped-up carts.
There's no broader media plan for Fanatics Games, at least not yet. Clips will appear on Fanatics social media accounts and will likely get aggregated by other sports profiles thereafter, but there is no tie-up with a major streamer.
The winner will receive $1 million, with other prizes including a Ferrari and a LeBron James trading card valued at $250,000. If no fan finishes in the top three, the highest finishing fan will win $100,000.
Michael Rubin's company is trying to become a one-stop shop for anything a sports fan might want to buy, from jerseys and trading cards to wagers and tickets. More recently, the company has been folding as many Fanatics verticals on top of each other as possible—utilizing the company's relationships with athletes and influencers to further promote the web of Fanatics product and IP.
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Fanatics Fest was itself a child of that strategy. The event, which the company said drew 70,000 people to New York City's Javits Center last year, was the first major endeavor by the group's events arm, which launched in 2023 with IMG as a minority partner. Fanatics Fest was modeled after Comic Con, with Fanatics product for sale, experiential booths for fans and an appearance list that included Brady, Durant and Morgan.
All three of them will compete in the first Fanatics Games. Others committed right now include Hart, IShowSpeed, KSI, Russell Wilson, Rob Gronkowski, C.J. Stroud, Druski, Micah Parsons, Alex Rodriguez, Odell Beckham Jr., Tyreek Hill, Jayden Daniels, Draymond Green, Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Rhea Ripley and Jordan Chiles. Joining them will be 50 fans who buy a Fanatics Fest ticket and submit a video application via—what else—the Fanatics app.
There are other overlaps between the famous competitors and the greater Fanatics ecosystem, either via partnerships or the celebrities' appearances at Rubin's 'white parties.' Last year Rubin posted a video of a beach football game prior to one of those parties featuring Brady, Beckham, Parsons and Stroud.
Fanatics revenue was $8.1 billion in 2024, up 15% from 2023, Sportico reported earlier this year. The apparel and merchandise business is the biggest of its three main units ($6.2 billion in revenue), followed by trading cards ($1.6 billion) and gambling ($300 million).
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To put on the games, Fanatics is partnering with OBB Media and Cheat Code Studios.
Last year, MrBeast (AKA Jimmy Donaldson) released a video featuring amateurs competing against Brady, Noah Lyles, Bryce Harper, Bryson DeChambeau and Cristiano Ronaldo. The video now has 274.4 million views. MrBeast also organized a 3-point contest during the NBA All-Star Weekend that featured Damian Lillard and a college student.
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