Look no further than the attendance numbers of Fanatics Fest 2025 to gauge its success.
Over 125,000 fans appeared across three days in New York City — including a sellout on Saturday — after 70,000 attendees showed up to last year’s inaugural Fanatics Fest. The celebration featured drastic improvements across sports activations, card trading, and more.
Senior Vice President Mike Armstrong was one of the leaders in revamping Fanatics Fest. He worked on New York Comic Con for over a decade and entered last year thinking many similar strategies would work for Fanatics Fest.
Some did, but Armstrong said there were many features that left room for development ahead of Fanatics Fest 2025. A major piece of feedback was that the card trading felt minimized and off to the side, he said.
“We came into this year saying that the Hobby [trading cards] needs to be at the center of everything,” Armstrong told amNewYork. “So one of the first booths you see when you walk on the floor [is] Topps Fanatics Collect, and then all of the dealer spaces are interspersed throughout the show.”
Dealers said they saw a large amount of new trading fans this time, according to Armstrong. The Fanatics team strategically arranged card spaces widely throughout the floors, including placing them around activation games, like the WWE section.
The autograph and photo zone was another portion that was spread out more this time. Armstrong said it was “completely revamped and such a better experience for our fans than we had last year.”
Last year, the autograph zone was packed onto the back of the main floor. For Fanatics Fest 2025, it was shifted to the ground floor in its own sector for better spacing.
All activation games remained on the main floor, though. Armstrong felt they all leveled up for this year.
MLB’s area in 2024 gave participants a chance to bat and play MLB The Show on consoles. This time, there was a mound that fans pitched off as they attempted to dot the strike zone. At the NHL section, there was a new drone camera that captured 360° videos of fans in action. New games entirely, like a mini-tennis competition, were included in the improvements.
There were eight different primary challenges across the different sports. Fanatics Games, a new challenge where 50 fans and 50 athletes competed, forced participants to play in each of the games to crown an overall champion from the highest scorer.
Tom Brady finished first and won $1 million. The seven-time Super Bowl winner gifted $5,000 to every fan who played in the games and donated $750,000 to charity. MMA fighter Justin Gaethje earned second and a new Ferrari, while fan Matt Dennish ended third and won a LeBron James trading card.
Dennish, who Brady said didn’t even know he was competing in the games until the Sunday before Fanatics Fest, traded the card to Brady for $250,000 and a signed jersey and card. Six of the top-10 finishers in Fanatics games were fans.
“[The athletes] were very competitive, I mean, it’s in their nature,” Armstrong said. “And then the fans, a lot of the fans did way better than I think any of us were expecting.”
The announcement of the winners concluded a Fanatics Fest that saw a large expansion. In 2024, around 80% of attendees were from the tri-state area, a number that decreased this year, according to Armstrong.
Next up is Fanatics Fest 2026, which will be during the same year that the FIFA World Cup comes to MetLife Stadium in June, providing a unique opportunity for international growth.
“Some of the talent we’re discussing internally already is out of this world,” Armstrong said. “With all of the great sports activities that’s going to be in the city in the summer next year, I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of surprises up our sleeve.”
