Fanatics adds NHL player jerseys to its growing professional sports roster

Fanatics, the world’s leading supplier of licensed sportswear, will begin making and designing jerseys for NHL players beginning with the 2024-25 season, the latest expansion of its growing uniform business.

Fanatics replaces Adidas, which has been making player jerseys since 2017. Fanatics already produces all of the NHL replica nues that fans can purchase, as well as the training apparel that players and coaches wear in practice and during games. As part of a licensing and sponsorship agreement with the NHL, the company’s “F” logo will appear on the back of players’ jerseys for the first time.

“We had the opportunity to become not only the brand behind the scenes, but the brand in front of the scenes,” said Michael Rubin, the CEO of Fanatics.

Adidas said in July it would not renew its contract as the league’s uniform and apparel supplier beyond the 2023/24 season.

Fanatics began making player uniforms for Major League Baseball after acquiring Majestic in 2017. For the NFL, Nike produces uniforms for players, but Fanatics makes the “authentic” NFL jerseys for fans to buy. In both cases, Nike is the official sponsor, so the swoosh logo is on the uniforms.

Hockey is a growing category for Fanatics. Rubin said his company, which is privately held, sells about $150 million a year in hockey jerseys and other gear to fans, up from about $10 million when the company started working with the NHL about 15 years ago. Now, in addition to fan jerseys, Fanatics will produce tens of thousands jerseys for players each year, all made in Canada, as part of a new, 10-year agreement with the NHL

“This is a logical evolution of what we’ve been doing for the past 15 years,” said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

Fanatics also runs merchandise stores in several NHL arenas, as well as the league’s flagship store in Manhattan, and manufactures the caps and shirts players wear after they win the Stanley Cup.

Best known for its e-commerce sales, Fanatics now produces about half of what it sells. Most of the production capacity has been acquired through purchases of companies such as Majestic and Mitchell & Ness, which make vintage and vintage teamwear. The company’s commerce business will generate about $6 billion this year, Rubin said, and more than 80 percent will be sold directly to consumers online or through the roughly 2,000 stores the company operates.

The Fanatics memorabilia and collectibles department also collaborates with Auston Matthews, Alex Ovechkin, Igor Shesterkin, Nathan MacKinnon and other NHL stars.

“Fanatics is now approaching a $10 billion company, and the cost of the exposure will be a great return to our shareholders,” Rubin said of having the company’s logo on the back of NHL uniforms.

In the 1990s, most major sports leagues and their teams made deals with various suppliers to produce and sell licensed merchandise. In the past decade or two, leagues began partnering with just one company to standardize production and distribution. Reebok was the exclusive supplier of NHL gear until it was purchased by Adidas. NHL agreements tend to run longer than those of other leagues, says Paul Lukas, the founder and editor of Uni watcha website dedicated to uniforms, logos and related matters.

CCM was the exclusive supplier of uniforms from 2000-1 to 2003-4. Reebok made the league’s uniforms from the 2005-6 season to 2016-17, before Adidas took over.

Many hockey fans also appreciate brands like CCM, Bauer and Koho, which have “a long tradition and more cachet than some of the corresponding brands in other sports,” Lukas said.

But hockey fans have also been critical of newcomers, including Fanatics.

Chris Creamer, the founder and editor of Sports Logos.net, said having a single company design each team’s uniforms can create “a template-like look. It would be difficult to avoid duplication of effort in the design.”

But he said sports fans generally don’t like change. “They want what they grew up with, everyone and their opinions be damned,” said Creamer. Throwback uniforms, he said, are “like flipping through an old family album.” We like to romanticize the past with hockey.”

Fanatics said when it took over production of replica jerseys in 2017, it tweaked the design after talking to fans. One change included making the shield in the center of jerseys more flexible, making them easier to fold and more washable. Fanatics said it will also survey players and equipment managers when it takes over production of their jerseys in another year.