Topps out---Fanatics in

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Originally Posted by Kracer52

Disney is an awful example. They have a ton of competition for theme parks. Even within Orlando they have to compete with Universal. The reason they continually open new parks, new restaurants, and new attractions is for customer retainment and to compete with both Universal and various other vacation options. Fanatics won't have any of those problems within the card world.

Also, if Fanatics wanted an easy takeover of Topps, it would have been easier and likely cheaper to wait until after the merger to dump this news. With Topps staying private, it cuts down on a lot of methods to take over a company. Especially if Topps doesn't actually want to sell.

Im also not sure why you're being so adversarial and combative in this thread. Its been a fairly conversational thread without animus until this page.

Lastly, as far as Majestic goes, Under Armor ended up getting cut from that deal, and Majestic now uses their plant to manufacture the Nike labeled stuff for MLB. That was absolutely a vertical integration deal.

I'll reply in sections, as you have a lot going on here.

I used Disney to show, that even the biggest players in that space, still need to give people reasons to come back. The 2 Disneyland Parks bring in 30MIL people a year. Knottsberry Farm near by, 4MIL. In Orlando, the Disney Parks see 60MIL people a year. Triple that of the 2 Universal parks do.

By your own admission, you agree that Disney reinvesting in its parks helps with customer retainment, which was exactly why I said Fanatics cant just sell cards, because they make cards. They still need to give us a reason to buy. Think of it as Disney being Fanatics and Just Minors being the petting zoo down the street. There will still be competition for cards, but the biggest players still need to make sure they can get your money.

If the Topps merger and public sale were to happen, Fanatics would then have to buy stock on the open market. And that includes Topps, as a business, and not just their sports card division. I made that clear in my statement. Half of all Topps earnings comes from candy, gift cards and things outside of physical sports cards.

Its the whole "buy the cow to get the milk" scenario. When all Fanatics wants is the milk, hence, no need to buy the cow. Also, if Topps went public, outside of a hostile takeover, Fanatics would have to deal with a board of controlling shareholders that hold stock. And it is easier to get a handful of people to agree to a deal, then possible hundreds. Make no mistake, the timing of this announcement was done prior to the IPO for a good reason.

Not trying to be adversarial. But I was defending my statements to a handful of trolls. I know better, and that is why I gave up even trying to make sense with certain people.

Lastly, for sure the Majestic takeover was a vertical move. But, one that most likely would not have happened, had Fanatics not wrestled the MLB away from them months earlier.

That deal, among all the other buyouts that Fanatics had of their one time partners, was just too good of a parallel to not point out when it comes to cards. Seize the exclusive rights to something, limit the current making from running operations, business as usual, and come in buy them out once you made them weak.