SportsEngine
Ex-ESPN sports business reporter Darren Rovell made the case for youth sports collectibles being the next hot trend during one of the panel discussions at NYSS.
His take: They have wide appeal — kids, parents, family and friends, collectors — and consumer habits show people will pay significant money for quality products that are meaningful to them and tell a story.
But, Rovell joked, the collectibles that already exist have not evolved much from his own little league trading cards made with a dot matrix printer and rubber cement decades ago.
He also pointed out he has a fraction of photos from his youth sports days compared to what he has of his kids.
“There is an opportunity now to bring the quality of youth sports collectibles to what we see now reflected in the regular market,” said Rovell, who founded Cllct -- a collectibles- and memorabilia-focused media company last year.
"You could actually have game-used patch cards, things from the tournament that if they’re not in the kids’ room, it’s in the parents’ room.”
I think sports cards and collectibles are in a bubble the way crypto and NFTs were in 2021. Full stop. You have one company - Fanatics - that now largely controls the supply in the card market, not unlike the way the Federal Reserve controls money supply. Its incentives to sell more cards are fundamentally at odds with the notion that scarcity creates value.
Still, some collectibles and game-used items will always retain value, much the way rare paintings hold their value, even if their worth ebbs and flows over time.
How does this translate to youth sports? Rovell is talking his book, to be sure, but I do think there is a need (or a want) for professional-quality sports cards and memorabilia in youth sports. It just won’t have the open-market value pro items do. To me, that feels like a “product” opportunity - i.e. better sports cards or items from a winning game or tournament - not a collectible opportunity.
TBH? I could think of 700 other interesting people to have on a youth sports panel before Darren Rovell.
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