WWE taps Fanatics for on-site retail at WrestleMania, Royale Rumble

Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment is expanding its partnership with Fanatics, as the growing sports platform will now take over the global event merchandise business for the professional wrestling company.

That means Fanatics will now operate all of the on-site retail at the WWE’s more than 300 events throughout the year, including its premier live events like WrestleMania and the Royale Rumble. The deal will kick off on May 1, ahead of WWE’s Backlash event.

Fanatics became WWE’s global e-commerce partner in 2022, a deal that later grew to include licensed merchandise, memorabilia, trading cards and collectibles.

“We’ve already experienced [Fanatics’] expertise in this category, and when we sat down and thought about how we could approach growing our retail business, we thought this could strengthen that growth,” said Alex Varga, WWE senior vice president and head of corporate development.

WWE has seen its live-event merchandise business grow as the company has returned to a fuller slate of events and shows as the pandemic has waned. In 2022, WWE reported that it had $23.8 million in venue merchandise revenue across 231 live events in 2022, up from $10.1 million the previous year when the company only had 101 live events. In comparison, WWE had $18.6 million in venue merchandise in 2019 across 260 events.

At its WrestleMania event earlier this month, the company said that it broke its all-time merchandise record, an increase of 20% compared to 2022, which was the previous high. It had more than 161,000 people in attendance over the two-night event.

Varga said the expanded relationship with Fanatics will help WWE make a further “connection between our e-commerce channel and our event retail channel,” which could mean ordering something from the merchandise stand that could then be delivered to your home later.

Fanatics’ existing relationships across sports could also further benefit WWE, Varga said. For example, WWE is hosting its SummerSlam event in August at Ford Field in Detroit, where the Detroit Lions play – Fanatics is the retail partner of the Lions, which will allow WWE to potentially use more of the retail spaces and team stores in the stadium.

Team relationships like the Lions and across other sports could be utilized too, Varga said, noting that WWE has found success recently with merchandise that is hyper-localized to the city the event is in – for example, a “Stone Cold” Steve Austin shirt themed to Los Angeles. This expanded partnership could help WWE collaborate on those shirts with local teams as well.  

WWE has increased the number of items it also sells since partnering with Fanatics, and Varga said there is likely further room to grow. “As they continue to grow their position in the space, we expect to grow with them,” he said.

Fanatics, a three-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company, now has relationships with more than 900 sports properties across the globe, including nearly every major sports league in the U.S.

This shift in WWE’s business comes after the news that it has agreed to merge with UFC to form a new publicly traded company controlled by Endeavor Group.

Endeavor will own a 51% stake in the new combat sports and entertainment company, while WWE shareholders will have the remaining 49%, according to the terms of the agreement. The deal values WWE at $9.3 billion and UFC, which is owned by Endeavor, at $12.1 billion, the companies said in a press release.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2023.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC, has an existing cable TV and streaming deal with WWE.