Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: Crypto, fanatics, nfts, wrestling, wwe

WWE Teams with Fanatics to Reboot WWE Shop, Launch More NFTs

Published Mon, 28 Mar 2022 16:38:10 -0500

WWE plans to do to mother nature what Will Smith did to Chris Rock as the company prepares to launch more NFTs alongside new e-commerce partner, Fanatics. WWE has formed a "long-term" partnership with the company to produce a range of merchandise and memorabilia, and as part of the deal, will launch a brand new WWE Shop online store to sell that merchandise. In addition, Fanatics' NFT division, Candy Digital, with become one of WWE's NFT partners, creating more of the digital collectibles gullible people have been buying for inexplicable reasons lately.

A press release provides the details:

As part of the agreement, this summer Fanatics will exclusively re-introduce a new, rapid e-commerce and mobile destination, WWE Shop, giving fans around the world access to a leading assortment of WWE merchandise across all categories, including apparel, hard goods, such as title belts, headwear, accessories and more. Fanatics will work closely and collaboratively with the talented teams at WWE who have significantly grown this business in-house for decades, and the company will also add rights to design, manufacture and distribute real-time, on-demand merchandise collections to celebrate unpredictable WWE moments and new and emerging Superstars.

Fanatics Collectibles, the company's trading cards and collectibles division, will also become the exclusive provider of licensed WWE physical and digital trading cards, which will once again bear the nostalgic Topps logo. Fanatics acquired the legendary 70-year-old Topps brand earlier this year, which previously held a long-term relationship with WWE. That deal will commence when WWE's existing trading cards rights expire over the next few years.

Also under the pact, later this year Fanatics' next generation digital collectibles company, Candy Digital, will become one of WWE's primary NFT partners. Candy's team of world-class digital artists, designers, and technologists will curate and build a full range of high-quality trading card NFTs featuring WWE's biggest moments and stars.

This is just the lastest example of WWE outsourcing a function once performed internally in the company. In 2021, WWE sold the rights to its WWE Network content to NBC to use for their Peacock streaming service. Also in 2021, WWE outsourced the employment of many of their best wrestlers to AEW. And now, they're outsourcing the WWE shop to Fanatics. Truly, it is the end of an era. And by end of an era, we mean an end to the era of life on Earth after the planet melts thanks to all those Sasha Banks NFTs.

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