After reaching its peak in the 1990s, the sports trading card industry has had to undergo major changes in order to adapt to the digital age and remain relevant in our smartphone world. One company in particular, Panini America, has been leading the way when it comes to fan engagement on pixelated platforms (it’s now experimenting with fantasy-like contests for sports fans who collect digital trading cards.) But two examples of Panini’s success: It sold a Tom Brady autographed rookie card for $31,100, and its website crashed last week (OK, they need some IT help) because there was so much demand for Zion Williamson’s rookie card.
SportTechie recently caught up with Jason Howarth, the company’s VP of marketing, to talk about what drives consumer behavior when it comes to modern-day sports collectibles, how this relatively new technology is actually reigniting demand for physical trading cards, and what Panini has learned about fan engagement at a time when there’s a seemingly endless supply of digital sports content that’s largely available for free.
SPORTTECHIE: What’s the overarching philosophy at Panini?
HOWARTH: We are authentic to the players more than anything else. We do a lot of storytelling on social media, a lot of show and tell. We have over 2,000 contracts across all sports, where guys are signing our trading cards. When we’re with them, we’re always trying to capture that content and then share that on our social platforms. Getting that energy of being around the players—and showing off the product—is really what drives our fan engagement.
SPORTTECHIE: What’s a good example of your social content?
HOWARTH: So we’re just coming off of our NBA rookie photo shoot. Behind the scenes with the athletes, whether they’re getting their photos taken or they’re signing our cards, just sharing those interactions with guys like Zion Williamson or Ja Morant or RJ Barrett to build up excitement—that’s really big for us in the physical realm of things.
NEW STUDY: Select NFL Teams Wearing Sensor-Laden Mouth Guards
SPORTTECHIE: What about the digital realm. What’s your focus there?
HOWARTH: On the tech side of it, we’ve got an app called, Blitz, which is our NFL digital trading card app. When we launched Blitz, it was designed to be wherever the collector wanted to be to collect cards. So whether they enjoyed doing that from a physical perspective or a digital perspective, we wanted to make sure that we were able to provide that in any way they want to continue collecting. And then we expanded upon it over the last year and a half with different things in the app that create another level of engagement with our trading cards. On the digital side we have things like contests where you open up your pack of cards and you can put them into contests for the week. It’s not dissimilar to how people would view fantasy.
SPORTTECHIE: If you own a card in the digital app, does that mean you also own a physical replica of the card? How does that work?
HOWARTH: There are cards that exist in our app that mirror our physical products. Some of the cards that you can collect in our app also exist in the physical realm, so there is the ability to go out and get that physical trading card. But we also have cards that are exclusive and only exist in our digital trading card apps, like Blitz [NFL] and Dunk [NBA]. So if you want to go out and get one of those physical cards that you have in the digital app, you could go to Walmart or Target or our online store and buy that product.
SPORTTECHIE: Do people still attend memorabilia shows? What’s the fan experience like now that the industry is shifting toward digital trading cards?
HOWARTH: We just had the National Sports Collectors Convention that takes place every year. [Held in Chicago, the annual event attracted the most people since 1991.] There are card stores and card sellers and manufacturers. We have a presence there; we have our booth. We do a lot of different things to engage fans. But, you know, there’s different elements and levels of engagement.
SOCCER STARS: Skills & Drills App Lets Kids Take Practice Home
That card show, those types of things that you and I did as kids, it’s happening in the digital realm now with box openings online. People are opening up our product through case breaking, which is people selling spots to other people—and every person has a designated team within that case break. There’s a lot of show and tell, a lot of people are sitting there just watching the live stream to see what’s coming out of the box. To see if a “one of one” Kyler Murray card comes out or a “one of one” Zion Williamson card comes out—or any of the emerging rookies or top players are coming out of those boxes. That mentality of going to card shows as kids lives in the digital realm now with case breaking or box openings.
SPORTTECHIE: What exactly is case breaking?
HOWARTH: So there will be a person that’s running a case break. Essentially they open up cases of product. And so what happens is in the case of the NFL, there’d be 32 spots in that case break. You might get the Cleveland Browns and I get the New England Patriots. As they’re opening up that case of product, every Cleveland Browns card that comes out, you end up getting it. So you get that Baker Mayfield card, that Odell Beckham Jr. card. Every Patriots card that comes out, I end up getting it. Someone who has the Dallas Cowboys or the Arizona Cardinals is getting those cards that come out of that product.
There’s this whole vibrant community that exists where people are talking in the chat as the cards are being revealed from the case. We’ve got kids who are doing it. We’ve got twenty- and thirty-somethings who are actively engaged in case breaking now, either because they want to go out and find that awesome rookie card or because they want to just collect their favorite players or their favorite teams.
SPORTTECHIE: Are your consumer demographics different when it comes to participating in digital card collection versus physical card collection?
HOWARTH: Yes and no. Your core collector is engaging across the board, whether that be physical or digital—that base that exists both in the digital realm and in the physical realm. The younger audience is definitely consuming our product differently from a physical point of view. In the case of the NFL, we’ll have 36 different NFL brands or products and they vary in price range. So for our $1.99 Donruss football product that sells at Walmart and Target or our online store, kids can go out and buy those cards. We scale up as the season progresses, so we’ll get to a product called Flawless that sells for $1,500. It comes in a sealed briefcase and there are 10 cards in that box. They’ll have jewels embedded and everything from diamonds and rubies and emeralds or plates of gold in the card. Little Johnny isn’t buying that $1,500 box—his dad is.
SPORTTECHIE: How have digital cards changed the culture around trading collectibles in general?
HOWARTH: Right now the physical trading card category is on this high trajectory of growth. You have guys like Zion Williamson coming into the league and there’s this appetite and demand for wanting to get that first rookie card—there’s that value on the physical side. We want fans to be able to consume collectibles in the physical realm and in the digital realm. However they want to consume collectibles, we want to be able to provide that on whatever platform they choose. We just launched on Weibo last week, expanding our social presence into China. That was built on the popularity of our physical trading card products, primarily led by the NBA in China, but also the English Premier League and the NFL. So we’re working on building a trading card culture in that marketplace through social platforms.
SPORTTECHIE: You’re also leveraging the digital world—the way we communicate these days—to print physical cards on demand. How does that process work?
HOWARTH: We’ve got an on-demand platform called Panini Instant. The great thing about Panini Instant is it celebrates real-time performances. That very first moment when Zion Williamson steps onto the court for the first time as an NBA player, we’ll be able to produce the Panini Instant card and make it available to fans on our website literally the next day to celebrate and commemorate that moment. So fans will be able to go out there and buy that card, whatever the volume of that card is … let’s say 5,000 people buy it, or 10,000 or 15,000 people buy it—whatever the number is, we will only print that many cards.
FIGHT CLUB: Science Is Drawing a Fine Line Between Winners and Losers in UFC
When Eli Manning threw for 30,000 yards, we released that card on Panini Instant to celebrate him passing the 30,000-yard mark in his career. We worked closely with the New York Giants to highlight that to their fans across social platforms, letting people know that the card was available. When the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship, we were able to produce NBA Finals cards of them hoisting the trophy. We had that card available in real time the next day for fans who were celebrating the Raptors’ championship.
With Panini Instant, we’re going to work closely with a number of teams this year—both in the NFL and in the NBA—to highlight that real time component. We now have the ability, as people are walking out of arenas, to push-notify them and let them know, ‘Hey, that moment you just saw, there’s a card of that and you can get it right now. All you have to do is click here.’ If you walk out of a stadium with your son after his first game, you can celebrate that with a Panini Instant moment. If there’s something that happens in that game, you can get that card and put it in a nice card holder. It brings another level of engagement, another emotional connection to the fan.
SPORTTECHIE: There seems to be some natural crossover between fantasy sports players and modern-day card collectors. How is Panini capitalizing on that with contests?
HOWARTH: The people who are collecting our cards, they have an affinity for playing fantasy sports. There are people that collect their favorite teams, there are people that collect rookies, or just superstars. Now people are wanting to collect just the guys that are on their fantasy roster.
ACES: Behind-the-Scenes With ESPN at the U.S. Open
I think it’s relatable to fantasy. You’re building your lineups in our contests based on the cards you have in your album—you have to have the cards in the collection. You can’t put Zion Williamson in your lineup unless you have a Zion Williamson card. And then it comes down that variation of card. There’s a value. If you’ve got the more common Patrick Mahomes card and you put that in your lineup—but I happen to have a rarer Patrick Mahomes card in my lineup, my Patrick Mahomes card is going to beat yours because it’s rarer. Once a card is used, it can’t be used in another lineup unless you have a second version of that card—that’s an enhancement that we’ve made this year. There’s also multiplier component on the back of the card, and it’s based on what’s happening on the field. You’ve got a multiplier based on the rarity of the card. Let’s say Patrick Mahomes throws for two touchdowns, and you’d typically get 14 points, well if you had a rare card that was a two-time multiplier, you’d get 28 points.
SPORTTECHIE: Any other enhancements for this NFL season?
HOWARTH: The total number of cards that have been pulled in our NFL Blitz app is over 150 million. Since March we’ve had over 250,000 trades, over a million cards hunted in our card hunter within the digital app, which is people going out and surfing to try and find cards. And that’s all in the off-season. We’re going to work on some things that integrate that experience with in-stadium activations, where we invite fans to download the Blitz app. And because of geotargeting, you can collect a card of that team. We’re going to do this with select NFL teams, but if you’re sitting in a stadium and you open up our Blitz app, you may be able to get that hot rookie from that team or one of their top players because you’re sitting in the stadium. Which is another cool way of engaging fans.
Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at talkback@sporttechie.com