In Focus: Fanatics – Fanatical About Fans

After delivering all retail at EURO 2024 as official partner of UEFA, Fanatics’ new International President, Stephen Dowling, tells us how football, fans and fashion will connect in the future.

As a teenager in Dublin, Stephen Dowling got used to being part of building sports merchandise empires. “My father was a carpenter and he helped construct lots of sports shops in Dublin,” he recalls.

“I used to tag along when he was working on them! So, for me to be running an organisation which now has 2000 retail locations globally and a major online presence with Fanatics is like going full circle.”

And ‘building’ is the buzzword for Stephen, as he charts his way through the first few months of hectic growth as the new President for the international arm of the business. It is at a time of supercharged growth, which has seen Fanatics announce new deals with the likes of Juventus, New Zealand Rugby, The R&A and Sunderland AFC in recent weeks and turning iconic moments from both Euro 2024 and Copa America into sought-after sportswear in just two days. 

“We were delivering products the next day for thousands of football fans, we run the official sites for five of the Federations at the Euros, run retail at The Open in Royal Troon, the official online Olympic Store, so it’s been a busy summer!

“But our drive to succeed comes about by being fans ourselves and listening to what the fans of our partner teams and organisations want. Those conversations are always the exciting part of my role. They really do show that the passion for support through sportswear, merchandise and memorabilia is a constantly changing world.”

To deliver to these diverse fan bases also requires agility with two key Euros moments cited by Stephen as an example.

“Jude Bellingham’s overhead kick against Slovakia in the Euros sent the internet wild. We knew by monitoring the social media reaction that there was merchandise potential here. So, we set about getting the silhouette image of it, designing a unique product, and offering that through our online stores immediately. That product was in the hands of fans shopping with Fanatics within days of the ball hitting the net.”

And a similar Euro event provided a lovely touch for those who bought the shirt of Spain days after they lifted the trophy.

“Again, there is always a lot of social media chatter from fans about what it must be like to be at the trophy presentation with all that glitter and confetti firing off. We noticed that and sent a colleague down pitchside in Berlin to pick up as much confetti as possible after the final. We then packaged that up into little boxes and put it in with some Spain shirt orders within 24 hours.”

It was an experience Stephen admits could only be possible thanks to the close relationship between Fanatics and its partners.

“Being the official partner of UEFA was crucial to us delivering that unique fan experience to fans of the Spanish national team. The trust and partnership we develop with partner clubs and organisations such as UEFA makes this happen. To have that support from them to allow us to be innovative is amazing and it really adds value for their fans.”

It also allows them to integrate further with the fans, whether that be running a ‘shirt amnesty van’ during the Euros where fans wearing unofficial replicas could swap to the official new kit for free. Or it being Stephen’s trip down the pub with twelve Chelsea fans to find out what makes them tick when it comes to fan engagement and merchandise. To meet these demands requires global scale and local knowledge.

Fanatics is one of the world’s biggest sports platforms online, not only does it power more than 900 global partner sites, but Fanatics UK store is one of the biggest online retailers of football in Europe. Globally it partners with more than 50 football clubs and organisations and through its partnership with sides ranging from Juventus to England, Sunderland to Argentina, Inter Miami to Kashima Antlers, it can deliver the nuances of individual passions to a new audience far and wide.

Dowling continues: “It’s important that we have strong local presence for our partners and our UK and European partners are benefitting from our recent investment into a new 185k sq ft warehouse facility in the UK, which can ship up to 75,000 packages a day to meet the scale of demand that we are receiving across the whole of the continent. Without a global network we cannot deliver a global fan experience – we have more than 80 facilities worldwide, delivering to more than 190 countries each year. 

“There’s no one like Fanatics for the breadth of sports that we cover globally and that is a facilitator for football. It gives the teams we work with access to a new fan who is perhaps currently interested in a popular sport in their own country, but who is developing an interest in football.

“You see that with the growth of shirt sales for clubs like our partner, PSG in countries where, like Japan, the primary sport that a person follows may be baseball. But perhaps they have adopted the PSG outfit because it merges that boundary between fashion and sport.

“We’ve served PSG fans in more than 100 countries this year alone, but it’s not just them. We’ve served Aston Villa fans in more than 75 countries, and, in just the last few weeks alone, we’ve served Sunderland fans in more than 25 countries worldwide. Club’s need to think local, but also can they reach and appeal to a fan wherever they are in the world?”

So, what about the future? Where is the global growth for merchandise going to come from for football teams? Stephen points to three areas where football has been weak in supporting as places for great opportunity in building new fans and new revenues.

“Some clubs worry about different products and may only want to create or offer the official club strips. But what we’ve discovered is that creating accessible fashion products at a variety of price points does not cannibalise those in the market for the top end replica shirt. In fact, some people are likely to buy both. We had more than 700 different England products available throughout Euro2024 at a range of price points and it was the most successful UEFA tournament ever for England merchandise sales.

“We are always a sports company first. However, sports and fashion are merging, and sport has become high fashion. You see that with luxury fashion companies getting into sports products. And a lot of that interest has come from their female consumers. An industry like ours must be very aware now about the desire for women to be part of the sports leisure and memorabilia business. 

“Truth be told, they have historically been left out or ignored in this space. When women have wanted a replica kit from their favourite men’s sports team in the past, they’ve sometimes been told to buy a smaller men’s kit to get the size they want.

“That’s not going to cut it anymore. These fans expect better design, cloth and fit for what they want whilst still retaining the DNA of the club or nation they love. We as a sports industry need to get better at providing better experiences for female fans of any football team, and that is one area I am keen for us to grow in my new role.”

And then there is the demand outside clothing.

“We serve fans looking for memorabilia and collectibles too, such as through our brand Topps, who have just become the official Premier League sticker book publishers. The ability for a fan to be truly immersed in the passion of your football team on a global scale becomes easier to achieve for any club when there are multiple physical assets on offer in one online space.”

He may feel he has come full circle from those Dublin sports shop days, but the trajectory for Stephen’s new role is forward as fan desire to embed themselves in football’s DNA continues to be shown in many ways.