Topps will have MLB Exclusive beginning in 2010!
SDSportsFan
Posts: 5,181 ✭✭✭✭✭
According to the article, MLB will announce tomorrow that they've awarded Topps an exclusive contract to make baseball cards, effective next year!
NY Times Story
What do you think this will mean for the hobby?
Steve
NY Times Story
What do you think this will mean for the hobby?
Steve
0
Comments
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EDIT: By the way, is there a difference between exclusivity and a monopoly?
<< <i>By the way, is there a difference between exclusivity and a monopoly?
The first thought that comes to my mind is that Upper Deck will be in the same boat as Donruss. They'll be able to make cards (as Donruss did with their "Sport Kings"), but will have to remove all team logos from the cards. As "unlicensed" cards also, PSA won't holder them.
Steve
<< <i>That suprises me, I will have to keep an eye on their stock and UD's. >>
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There is no "stock" to watch.
All private, now.
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Oct 12, 2007 Topps Announces Closing of Acquisition by Michael Eisner's Tornante Company and Madison Dearborn Partners.
The Tornante Company is a privately held investment firm founded by former Walt Disney Company CEO Michael Eisner in 2005. Tornante invests in and creates media and entertainment.
Madison Dearborn Partners (MDP) is a private equity firm specializing in leveraged buyouts of privately held or publicly traded companies, or divisions of larger companies; recapitalizations of family-owned or closely held companies; balance sheet restructurings; acquisition financings; and growth capital investments in mature companies.
Madison Dearborn Partners was founded in 1992 and is based in Chicago, Illinois. The founders of Madison Dearborn had previously made private equity investments for First Chicago Bank.
Madison Dearborn's chairman, John Canning, Jr., is also a minority owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team and submitted an ultimately unsuccessful bid to buy the Chicago Cubs.
(I think MDP still owns LA Fitness. BIG lawsuit headed their way.)
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The Upper Deck Company, LLC (colloquially as Upper Deck and Upper Deck Authenticated, Ltd. in the UK), founded in 1988, is a private company primarily known for producing trading cards.
30
100 dollar a pack product. Kids don't care about sportscards anymore, they care about video games and pokemon. What does less competition
always mean?
I would be on the phone tomorrow if I had any UD redemptions, they won't last very long only doing football.
I love topps, but this isn't good news for the hobby.
Kevin
Interesting to see Topps come full circle. I'm not sure yet how I feel about this development.
On the one hand...one company would fit the hobby better when you consider that it's perhaps 20-25% of its size from 1992. Having to deal with Topps, Fleer, Donruss, UD, Sportflics, Score was bad enough; then you had the various offshoots like Stadium Club, Bowman, Leaf, etc. It became confusing to try and keep track of all the product. For sellers, it became a chore to stock all the offerings and others had to rely on the ol' crystal ball to figure out what their customers would buy. Contraction among manufacturers certainly helps those who are still in business with brick-and-mortar shops. However, there are few of them around any longer and Topps isn't exactly stocking the candy counters anymore like they did pre-1981.
On the other hand...the company that remains is the same one that was plagued by mediocre design, awful cardboard stock, centering issues and wax/gum residue because they didn't see the need to do much QC for something that was supposed to be marketed to kids 13 and under. The competition that arose in 1981 and again when UD came along in '89 was good for the hobby because it directly led to better cards. Even if the designs from the late 1980s and later weren't exactly stellar (and I'm thinking specifically of 1990 Topps and all 1991 Fleer sets).
Vintage Cards Specialist/Hobby Historian
Vintage Baseball Cards website:
http://www.obaks.com/vintagebaseballcards/index.html
What is the reasoning behind it? of course i'll think money....but any other background to the story?
CU Ancient Members badge member.
Collection: https://flickr.com/photos/185200668@N06/albums
At least UD still has Tiger Woods.
CU Ancient Members badge member.
Collection: https://flickr.com/photos/185200668@N06/albums
<< <i>...Kids don't care about sportscards anymore, they care about video games and pokemon...."
Kevin >>
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There is still a slight bit of hope, I suppose.
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wiki
Topps Europe Ltd Products
In 1994 Topps, which was then known in Europe as Merlin, acquired the Premier League license allowing the company to exclusively publish the only official Premier League sticker and album collection in the UK. The initial success of the Premier League stickers and album collection was so great that it took even Merlin by surprise, with reprint after reprint having to be produced.
Premier League stickers and albums are now in their 15th year and are now published under the new name of ‘Topps Total Football’.
Match Attax, the official Premier League trading card game, is the biggest selling boys collectable in the UK two years running. Being sold across the globe in a number of countries, the collection also holds the title of the biggest selling sports collectable in the world. It is estimated that around 1.5 million children collect it in the UK, and 2.5 million children in the world.
In the spring of 2008, Topps acquired the exclusive rights to the DFL Deutsche Fussball Liga GmbH for trading cards and stickers until the Bundesliga Season 2010/11. Bundesliga Match Attax was launched in January 2009 and is now available in over 40,000 stockists. The collection is the first of its kind in Germany and has become one of the biggest selling collections in the country.
30
again how can you appeal to kids and still charge 8+ a pack?
Kevin
<< <i>As "unlicensed" cards also, PSA won't holder them. >>
According to the pop report, they've graded a lot of the 2008 Donruss Elite cards, which are not licensed by MLB.
WTB: 2001 Leaf Rookies & Stars Longevity: Ryan Jensen #/25
<< <i>yeah hope that Eisner can turn around the hobby and get kids involved...this is the same guy that charges a 5 year old 50 bucks to get into a theme park? >>
About Eisner...my best friend growing up and his wife (I went to school with her too) both work for Disney -- or, as Don likes to call it, "the biggest Mickey Mouse operation on Earth" -- and neither of them have anything nice to say about the way he ran the company. After he left/was forced out by shareholders, the price of their stock has never been the same.
Vintage Cards Specialist/Hobby Historian
Vintage Baseball Cards website:
http://www.obaks.com/vintagebaseballcards/index.html
But I'm not happy about it and wish different types of changes could of been made.
Less brands and be more solid. Card verification database, anti scammer and better customer service.
wow.
What is the reasoning behind it? of course i'll think money....but any other background to the story? "
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wiki
Competition for player contracts
During this period, baseball card manufacturers generally obtained the rights to depict players on merchandise by signing individual players to contracts for the purpose. Topps first became active in this process through an agent called Players Enterprises in July 1950, in preparation for its first 1951 set. The later acquisition of rights to additional players allowed Topps to release its second series.
This promptly brought Topps into furious competition with Bowman Gum, another company producing baseball cards. Bowman had become the primary maker of baseball cards and driven out several competitors by signing its players to exclusive contracts. The language of these contracts focused particularly on the rights to sell cards with chewing gum, which had already been established in the 1930s as a popular product to pair with baseball cards.
To avoid the language of Bowman's existing contracts, Topps sold its 1951 cards with caramel candy instead of gum. However, because Bowman had signed many players in 1950 to contracts for that year, plus a renewal option for one year, Topps included in its own contracts the rights to sell cards with gum starting in 1952 (as it ultimately did). Topps also tried to establish exclusive rights through its contracts by having players agree not to grant similar rights to others, or renew existing contracts except where specifically noted in the contract.
Bowman responded by adding chewing gum "or confections" to the exclusivity language of its 1951 contracts, and also sued Topps in U.S. federal court. The lawsuit alleged infringement on Bowman's trademarks, unfair competition, and contractual interference. The court rejected Bowman's attempt to claim a trademark on the word "baseball" in connection with the sale of gum, and disposed of the unfair competition claim because Topps had made no attempt to pass its cards off as being made by Bowman. The contract issue proved more difficult because it turned on the dates when a given player signed contracts with each company, and whether the player's contract with one company had an exception for his contract with the other.
As the contract situation was sorted out, several Topps sets during these years had a few "missing" cards, where the numbering of the set skips several numbers because they had been assigned to players whose cards could not legally be distributed. The competition, both for consumer attention and player contracts, continued until 1956, when Topps bought out Bowman. This left Topps as the dominant producer of baseball cards for a number of years.
Consolidation of a monopoly
The next company to challenge Topps was Fleer, another gum manufacturer. Fleer signed star Ted Williams to an exclusive contract in 1959 and sold a set of cards oriented around him. Williams retired the next year, so Fleer began adding around him other mostly retired players in a Baseball Greats series, which was sold with gum. Two of these sets were produced before Fleer finally tried a 67-card set of currently active players in 1963. However, Topps held onto the rights of most players and the set was not particularly successful.
Stymied, Fleer turned its efforts to supporting an administrative complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission, alleging that Topps was engaging in unfair competition through its aggregation of exclusive contracts. A hearing examiner ruled against Topps in 1965, but the Commission reversed this decision on appeal. The Commission concluded that because the contracts only covered the sale of cards with gum, competition was still possible by selling cards with other small, low-cost products. However, Fleer chose not to pursue such options and instead sold its remaining player contracts to Topps for $395,000 in 1966. The decision gave Topps an effective monopoly of the baseball card market.
That same year, however, Topps faced an attempt to undermine its position from the nascent players' union, the Major League Baseball Players Association. Struggling to raise funds, the MLBPA discovered that it could generate significant income by pooling the publicity rights of its members and offering companies a group license to use their images on various products. After initially putting players on Coca-Cola bottlecaps, the union concluded that the Topps contracts did not pay players adequately for their rights.
MLBPA executive director Marvin Miller then approached Joel Shorin, the president of Topps, about renegotiating these contracts. At this time, Topps had every major league player under contract, generally for five years plus renewal options, so Shorin declined. After continued discussions went nowhere, the union before the 1968 season asked its members to stop signing renewals on these contracts, and offered Fleer the exclusive rights to market cards of most players (with gum) starting in 1973. Although Fleer declined the proposal, by the end of the year Topps had agreed to double its payments to each player from $125 to $250, and also to begin paying players a percentage of Topps's overall sales. The figure for individual player contracts has since increased to $500.
As a byproduct of this history, Topps continues to use individual player contracts as the basis for its baseball card sets today. This contrasts with other manufacturers, who all obtain group licenses from the MLBPA. The difference has occasionally affected whether specific players are included in particular sets. Players who decline to sign individual contracts will not have Topps cards even when the group licensing system allows other manufacturers to produce cards of the player, as happened with Alex Rodriguez early in his career. On the other hand, if a player opts out of group licensing, as Barry Bonds did in 2004, then manufacturers who depend on the MLBPA system will have no way of including him. Topps, however, can negotiate individually and was belatedly able to create a 2004 card of Bonds. In addition, Topps is the only manufacturer able to produce cards of players who worked as replacement players during the 1994 baseball strike, since they are barred from union membership and participation in the group licensing program.
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With Topps having MLB...there will simply be more Donruss EE edition type releases
RE Competition: UD has sole NHL contract, and it hasn't been as bad as people were saying/thinking.
Loth
Upper Deck base set has more hits per box, the USA autos in series I were an attraction, and the buyback relic in the series II boxes gave a nice 4 hits for an $80 for so box. What did Topps base set have, 10 card packs that are really 9 card packs because they are counting the useless ToppsTown cards as a card in the pack?
Goudey outdid Allen and Ginter this year without question because, as it has been discussed, the Goudey autograph checklist had much more strength and depth. I mean really, how many people are pleased getting Unicorn relics and Burke Kenny autos out of a baseball card product that costs $4-$5 a pack?
Topps also managed to mess up this year's WBC redemptions ROYALLY. I'm not sure how many people know the story, but basically some of the cards are numbered differently on the actual card than they were on Topps' checklist, so, for instance, #6 is actually #7, and so on and so forth. I called Topps to complain that many of my customers were unhappy that the redemption cards had numbering errors, and the customer service rep replied by saying "Sir, they're just baseball cards." Yeah, they are just baseball cards that now only Topps can make, and only Topps can now take those baseball cards for granted and churn out more crap.
Loth
<< <i>So basically as far as the industry has come over the past 3 decades we're now going to step back into the 70's? This makes no sense to me. Wasn't a lawsuit filed back in 79 against Topps due to them having a monopoly which led to Donruss and Fleer in 1980? >>
Yes, that is absolutely correct. Perhaps with all the contract tearing-up and economic regulation meddling that the government has been conducting, companies are feeling more bold in thumbing their noses to the law as well.
I would rather pull that unicorn relic or Burke Kenny auto than a Tim Hudson plain swatch game worn jersey card from UD worth $2.00.
If you want normal buy the Heritage product.
In the grand scheme of things I do see this as a problem, no competition is always a drawback for the consumers.
I will miss the Goudey.
CU Ancient Members badge member.
Collection: https://flickr.com/photos/185200668@N06/albums
WTB: 2001 Leaf Rookies & Stars Longevity: Ryan Jensen #/25
ahhh, maybe where you are, but if you opened any you would of seen a checklist is only as good as the print runs. Can you really say that Tiger and MJ are
part of the list when their print runs are like 5? While I was pulling guys like Jay Bruce and Longoria out of A&G, my best Goudey autos were Tim Raines and
Gaylord Perry. I was able to trade Ginter all day long, I made one trade with Goudey.
It is clear that Upper Deck is just trying to copy topps, and while the design of Goudey is ok (and that isn't even a UD idea), the content was beyond bad
and the real checklist was baaaad.
Kevin
<< <i>Did Tony C just say that Goudey outbid A&G by far this year?
ahhh, maybe where you are, but if you opened any you would of seen a checklist is only as good as the print runs. Can you really say that Tiger and MJ are
part of the list when their print runs are like 5? While I was pulling guys like Jay Bruce and Longoria out of A&G, my best Goudey autos were Tim Raines and
Gaylord Perry. I was able to trade Ginter all day long, I made one trade with Goudey.
It is clear that Upper Deck is just trying to copy topps, and while the design of Goudey is ok (and that isn't even a UD idea), the content was beyond bad
and the real checklist was baaaad.
Kevin >>
I didn't mean to say that Goudey performed better--A and G outsold it without question--but rather I meant to say that Goudey was a better quality product. Allen and Ginter had many solid autographs like Longoria, but, as it has been discussed, many of the highest-tier players like Pujols were dropped from the autograph checklist such that you had a solid auto checklist with some decent pulls and some lesser players. Goudey, on the other hand, had high-tier autos, middling autos, and lesser autos, and I and many customers of mine felt that this added breadth for the Goudey auto checklist was pleasant. Personally I'd rather pull a nice Goudey Gaylord Perry auto on card than a Jay Bruce A & G--Perry's HOF legacy is solidified, Bruce is sitting on the DL with a broken wrist and a .207 average.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 6, 2009
MLB AND TOPPS ANNOUNCE EXCLUSIVE DEAL MAKING
TOPPS THE OFFICIAL BASEBALL CARD OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
Exclusive Multi-Year Deal Signifies Renewed Commitment to
Youth and Innovation, 40 Years After Their First Deal
Major League Baseball Properties (MLBP) and the Topps Company, the leading creator and marketer of sports cards, today announced an exclusive multi-year licensing deal to make Topps the Official Baseball Card of Major League Baseball. Topps will have exclusivity on MLB, Jewel Event and Club trademarks, logos and other intellectual property, for use on baseball cards, stickers and certain other product categories featuring MLB players. Topps’ exclusivity begins on January 1, 2010.
Topps will become the first exclusive baseball card company of MLB in nearly 30 years, as the company looks to expand its ongoing efforts to invigorate the category, continue launching ground-breaking products, improve the retail and collecting experience and make cards more relevant to children. Topps’ first exclusive product will be its 2010 Topps Baseball Series 1 to be unveiled next February.
“Generations of baseball fans have grown more connected to the game through collecting baseball cards,” said Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig. “We look forward to partnering with Topps to restore baseball cards as the game’s premiere collectable.”
“Topps has over the years clearly distinguished itself as the leader in the industry and the best brand in the business,” said Howard Smith, Senior Vice President, Licensing, Major League Baseball Properties. “This exclusive agreement with Topps follows similar arrangements in other categories that have resulted in superior products for fans and in turn unprecedented business success.”
Michael Eisner and The Tornante Company, a private investment company he founded in 2005, acquired The Topps Company, Inc. in 2007 along with Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC.
“We are looking forward to working closely with MLB Properties and its Clubs to invest in innovation and creativity to bring baseball cards and other collectible items to new audiences for many years to come,” said Eisner.
- more -
“Topps has been making baseball cards for over 50 years and signed our first agreement with Major League Baseball Properties in 1969,” said Topps CEO and President Scott Silverstein. “Now, 40 years later, we are delighted to be taking this relationship to new heights.”
As part of the iconic company’s plans to expand into the digital space, and to strengthen its connection with kids, Topps unveiled a multitude of new and innovative products over the past two years including ToppsTown.com, an online sports community developed just for kids and Topps 3D Live trading cards, the first augmented reality consumer product that brings your favorite MLB players to digital life, offering an unprecedented level of interactivity for kids, fans and collectors.
About Major League Baseball Properties
The Major League Baseball Clubs formed Major League Baseball Properties (MLBP) in 1966 as the Club’s agent for marketing and trademark licensing and protection. Major League Baseball Properties is responsible for managing consumer licensing activities, developing national advertising campaigns, cultivating sponsorship opportunities with major consumer brands and corporations, growing the game and the business of baseball outside the United States and creating national marketing programs in conjunction with Clubs, broadcast rightsholders and national sponsors. MLBP also operates a full-service video and audio production unit (Major League Baseball Productions), a publishing division and stock photo licensing agency, and manages logistics for the All-Star Game and World Series as well as all other special events. For more information on Major League Baseball, log on to www.MLB.com.
About The Topps Company, Inc.
Founded in 1938, Topps is a leading creator and marketer of sports and related cards, entertainment products, and distinctive confectionery. Topps entertainment products include Major League Baseball, NFL, NBA and other trading cards, sticker album collections, and collectible games. The Company's confectionery brands include "Bazooka" bubble gum, "Ring Pop," "Push Pop," "Baby Bottle Pop" and "Juicy Drop Pop" lollipops. For additional information, visit www.topps.com.
# # #
Contact: Matt Bourne or Jeff Heckelman, Major League Baseball, (212) 931-7878
Adam Schiff or Matthew Altman, Dan Klores Communications (for Topps), (212) 685-4300
For Sale
Maybe Upper Deck is saving their money for the NFL.
I wonder what UD will do with the Lebron and Kobe contracts now that they don't produce BKB cards anymore?
Link
Steve
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fraud
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And, the CSR witch should be FIRED.