In an industry pockmarked with distrust and whispers of favoritism, major sports cards manufacturer Fanatics/Topps is stepping up to face its critics head on. In the swirling dust of suspicion, the sports trading cards giant has enlisted the expertise of renowned financial auditing firm, KPMG, to independently review and verify the fairness, and more importantly, the randomness of their high-value card distribution. The intent? To dispel circulating rumors and satisfy a growing demand for transparency among collectors and dealers.
In the grand setting of the Industry Conference, a melting pot of contentious debate and converging visions in Atlanta, Mike Mahan, CEO of Fanatics Collectibles, took the stage with a ground-breaking pronouncement. Following a nail-biting, months-long audit, KPMG had officially given their method of card distribution a clean bill of health. The noise of the crowd died down as Mahan distilled the essence of KPMG’s conclusion: a definitive confirmation of Fanatics/Topps ability to effectively dodge any semblance of prioritization or favoritism in the dissemination of high-value cards.
The collective cursor of the collector community has hovered over the Fanatics/Topps operation for quite some time. A soupçon of uncertainty spiked with speculation has enveloped the firm, with many pondering the likelihood of privilege lacing the distribution. The cynics’ fuel? Social media videos capturing breakers effortlessly plucking high-value cards from packs, a statistically unlikely triumph, time and time again. The company’s CFO, Greg Abovsky, was quick to quell such speculation, attributing the success rate of high-value pulls to the colossal volume of cards navigated by the aforementioned breakers, rather than pointing towards any shadows of manipulation.
To counter such speculation and restore faith, KPMG was ushered into the heart of the Fanatics operation, their Texas printing facility. Here, the auditing entity pored over the matrix of the collation process, scrutinizing production logs of each painstaking job. The result? An assurance that the distribution of the precious commodity was indeed as random as Fanatics/Topps had maintained. A historical endeavor, this audit stands as the first in the industry to elevate transparency to such a level, an unabashed exposure of Fanatics’ distribution innards, ultimately sewn together with a badge of integrity bound by KPMG’s seal of approval.
Threading the narrative further, Abovsky chose to tackle another persistent rumor haunting the corridors of the collector community. The firm, he declared, has never ‘seeded’, or intentionally planted, valuable cards in boxes for the sake of promotion, a theory that has stubbornly clung to Fanatics. With future plans to rake through their randomness audit annually, Fanatics is staring down the barrel of uncertainty and skepticism with courage and determination, fervently bearing the torch of fairness in their quest to provide transparency and sustain trust in their industry practices. The firm aims not only to demonstrate, but to live, breathe and represent transparency, forever anchored in their commitment to fairness for their cherished community of collectors.