Fanatics is spreading further into both live events and the Middle East, partnering with longtime collaborator Tom Brady and Saudi Arabia’s state-backed Riyadh Season on a flag football game that will feature some of the NFLs biggest names.
The Fanatics Flag Football Classic will be played in the Saudi capital on March 21, the company said Monday in a release. Utilizing Olympics-style rules and televised by Fox Sports, the event will include Brady and a number of current NFL stars such as Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, Myles Garrett, Brock Bowers, CeeDee Lamb and Tyreek Hill.
It is Fanatics’ second big deal in the Middle East. Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is a Fanatics investor, and earlier this year Michael Rubin’s company signed a five-year deal with the state’s Government Communications Office (GCO) that included sponsorship of its big Fanatics Fest event in New York. Fanatics is also opening an office in Doha, its first in the region.
Like Qatar, Saudi Arabia is spending billions to lure sporting events and celebrities to the Kingdom. Riyadh Season, which draws tens of millions of visitors each year, has hosted soccer, basketball, esports, motorsports and combat sports. Last week WWE announced its Royal Rumble would be there in 2026 and its WrestleMania would follow in 2027.
The flag football event is also an expansion of Fanatics’ nascent event aspirations. At Fanatics Fest this year, the company hosted a $1 million competition that pitted athletes against fans and other celebrities. That tournament, the company’s first real foray into live competition, was later packaged for consumption via an ESPN special.
It’s unclear how ownership of the flag football event is being divvied up, or who all is investing. Details of the financial structure were not disclosed.
In true Fanatics fashion, the flag football event is a dense overlap of existing relationships, partners and collaborators. The game will be co-produced by Fanatics and OBB Media, the studio co-founded by Michael and Scott Ratner; OBB Media also worked on Fanatics Fest and the ESPN special.
The flag event’s roster includes at least five athletes who were featured in the Fanatics Fest competition—Lamb, Hill, Rob Gronkowski, Odell Beckham Jr. and Brady, who won the event. Kevin Hart, who also participated in the Fanatics Fest event, will host the flag football broadcast.
Brady is currently a Fox Sport broadcaster, and Gronkowski, his former teammate with both the Patriots and the Buccaneers, is also a Fox contributor. Brady’s creative studio, Shadow Lion, is also partnering in the flag event.
Many of these same current and former NFL stars have deeper Fanatics ties, too. Many have attended Rubin’s Super Bowl parties—or his more exclusive white parties—in the past. Last year’s white party included a beach football game, footage of which Rubin posted on his Instagram, which featured Brady and Beckham.
When Fanatics bought streetwear brand Mitchell & Ness for $250 million in 2021, Hart and Beckham invested alongside the company. Fanatics’ memorabilia arm has a long-term, exclusive deal with Brady.
Fanatics is also a long-time partner of the NFL’s—the league and its players union are both investors—and the league has spent a lot of money and influence over the past few years pushing the idea of flag football as an accessible way for more people to play the sport. Five-on-five flag football secured inclusion in the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles thanks in part to lobbying efforts by NFL owners, and the league recently announced it will allow its biggest stars to participate in the Summer Games.
There’s likely more overlap, which has become a principal part of Fanatics’ recent goal to have a presence in everything sports fans might want to buy. It is the largest seller of licensed sports apparel, and has recently expanded into trading cards, memorabilia, sports betting and events.
Fanatics’ revenue was $8.1 billion in 2024, up 15% from 2023, Sportico reported earlier this year. The apparel and merchandise business was the biggest of its three main units ($6.2 billion in revenue), followed by trading cards ($1.6 billion) and gambling ($300 million). The company is projecting $12 billion in revenue in 2026.
