Sports merchandise staple Fanatics recently raised $320 million in funding from investors like Major League Baseball, private equity firm Silver Lake and Fidelity Investments. That puts their valuation at $12.8B…with a capital B. Fanatics said it will use the capital to widen manufacturing capabilities and look at new acquisitions. The company is also looking to expand operations internationally. 

Back in 2017, which feels like an eternity ago, the NFL and MLB invested $150 million in Fanatics. Both leagues received $100 million equity increases in their holdings in Fanatics in a 2020 deal. 

With that being said, we have a sneaking suspicion that the company is eyeing an eventual IPO. 

To most people, the stars of sports merchandise companies are of course, the athletes. While Lebron James might be the dude who surges merchandise popularity on the court, Michael Rubin, chairman of Fanatics, and owner of around half of the company through his holding firm Kynetic, runs the show behind the scenes. Rubin dropped out of Villanova University in 1998 and started GSI Commerce, which offered e-commerce and digital marketing services to retailers. The rest as they say, is history. 

PayPal has begun to allow purchases using bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash, and litecoin from its wallet. The company teased us with the idea last October. Now, PayPal has solidified itself as one of the first sizeable mainstream financial companies to welcome cryptocurrencies with open arms. 

If a user has enough cryptocurrency to pay for their online purchase, the Checkout with Crypto feature appears along with the usual payment suspects like credit or debit. Since data privacy concerns have consumers a bit worried lately, Checkout with Crypto also includes PayPal’s safety and security benefits, including fraud protection, return shipping and purchase protection on eligible items.

Coincidentally, PayPal’s launch comes less than a week after Tesla said it would start accepting bitcoin payments for its cars. Since the popular kids of the payments and tech industry are welcoming crypto, it will help to dramatically expand the number of places where cryptocurrency can be used in the real world, leading to a wide, mainstream acceptance of cryptocurrencies. 

This is Part 4 of our series on the discovery process for web projects. Discovery, in the simplest of terms, is the process that consulting firms, agencies, and web development shops use to gain knowledge about an upcoming project. Once again we have Melissa Curra, Director of Strategy at SUMO Heavy. This week, we discuss Knowledge and Tech Review During Discovery.

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