The Panini football trading cards and stickers, a staple for many, many generations of kids (and collectors), will end in 2031, as FIFA and Fanatics have reached a long-term deal to give Topps (owned by Fanatics) the exclusive rights for football cards, stickers, and trading card games for World Cup and other FIFA events.
The Athletic reports that FIFA and Fanatics agreements ends a collaboration between FIFA and Panini that will have lasted over 60 years by the time it ends in 2031: from World Cup 1970 to World Cup 2030, it was Panini who made and sold the World Cup stickers (including in 2026, with the massive, 48-team collection released recently).
FIFA President Gianni Infantino said that Fanatics are "driving massive innovation in sports collectibles that does provide fans with a new, meaningful way to engage with their favorite teams and with their favorite players. So, from FIFA's point of view, we can globalize that fan engagement precisely thanks to our global tournament portfolio. And this provides another important commercial revenue stream that we channel back, as always, into the game, into football."
For many football fans in Europe, this may come as a scare, as Panini also sells domestic league stickers, and those local deals will remain, this is only for World Cup and other FIFA competitions, such as Club World Cup. The goal of this partnership is for Topps, a lesser known brand outside of the US (where they have 85% of clients as they make baseball, American football or basketball cards) to reach a global audience by also making football (soccer) cards.
Infantino added that "this deal reflects FIFA's strategy to learn from North America, where the commercialization of sport is really reaching different levels". Infantino also said this week, in a different space, that "United States is the country with the most developed entertainment market in the world" as he justified resale marketplaces for World Cup 2026, where tickets are reaching astronomical prices (from $10,000... to $2 million).