“Can a sports merchandise platform become the end-to-end financial and commerce OS for sports fans — spanning payments, BNPL, betting, brokerage, and loyalty across every touchpoint?”
Founded in 2011 as an online licensed sports merchandise retailer, Fanatics rapidly scaled into a multi-vertical digital sports platform through licensing deals, league partnerships, and acquisitions. Beginning around 2021–2022, the company pivoted aggressively beyond merchandise into adjacent verticals: trading cards and collectibles (Topps acquisition), sports betting and gaming (Fanatics Sportsbook, PointsBet acquisition), live commerce, and financial services (Fanatics Markets brokerage). The embedded finance angle has deepened across all verticals — from BNPL at checkout (Affirm, QuadPay), payment infrastructure (Stripe, Paysafe, American Express), and identity verification (Socure), to a licensed introducing brokerage. Fanatics is positioning itself as the financial and commerce OS for sports fans.
Fanatics's cards run on American Express.
Fanatics uses Socure for KYC and identity verification.
The Embedded Finance Index 2026 maps 4 layers in Fanatics's stack: Payments / PSP (Stripe and Paysafe); Card network (American Express); Lending (Buy Now, Pay Later (biweekly / monthly installments) and BNPL — QuadPay (legacy, via Fiserv, 2020)); KYC (Socure).
Fanatics was founded by Michael Rubin and is founded in 2011, headquartered in New York, New York, USA.
Fanatics has raised $4B+ in total (latest round: Series (General Corporate Purpose), 2022; valuation: $27B (2022)).
Get a read on where your own stack stands against Fanatics and the rest of its category — what they built versus bought, which providers they use, and where the gaps in your own strategy and competitive set actually are.