As the World Cup approaches, sports are entering an era of "fractionalized finance"

Original: Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author: Planet Xiaohua

The World Cup is about to kick off, and besides the prediction markets gearing up, another industry is quietly heating up.

Recently, FIFA announced a new rule: all players participating in the World Cup for the first time must wear a "debut patch" on their jerseys. This means that even globally renowned superstars who have never set foot on a World Cup pitch before, such as Erling Haaland and Lamine Yamal, will need to wear this special badge. Some national teams returning to the World Cup after many years may even need the entire squad to wear it.

This isn't just about creating a "sense of ceremony" for World Cup rookies. Those who understand the sports card industry know that this patch will be removed, authenticated, cut, and then embedded into sports cards after the match. Ultimately, it could become part of a 1/1 rookie autograph card, which will be graded, auctioned, and traded, potentially fetching a price in the future that exceeds a supercar.

Just this May, FIFA announced a long-term exclusive collectibles licensing partnership with Fanatics. In the future, World Cup-related sports cards, stickers, and collectibles systems will officially enter the Fanatics/Topps era.

You might not trade sports cards, but it's noteworthy that behind these small pieces of cardboard lies an alternative asset world worth over tens of billions of dollars, with a vast secondary market and long-term bull and bear cycles.

At the same time, the entire sports world is entering a new era of "fragmented finance."

Sports Leagues "Monetizing History by Tearing It Apart"

Fans in the past cared about "the historic moment a jersey witnessed," but now people might care about "how many pieces of history this jersey can be broken down into."

After all, one jersey can belong to dozens of cards, hundreds of buyers, be resold countless times in the future, and even form a price curve that continuously rises or fluctuates wildly.

A piece of fabric can travel from a player's chest to a card factory, into a blind box, then to a grading agency, into an auction house, and finally become an alternative asset in some investment portfolio.

Football (soccer) cards aren't new either. Since the 1970 World Cup, Panini has established the World Cup sticker and card system. Many fans' childhoods began with a World Cup sticker album.

However, it has never been able to establish a mature, high-liquidity "sports financial asset system" like the NBA.

Those unfamiliar with this might find it strange. Football has the largest global fan base, and its superstars hold immense commercial value. Yet, the prices, liquidity, and depth of the secondary market for football cards have long struggled to compare with the NBA.

The reason behind this is that the NBA is inherently more suited for "assetization," while football lacks a highly unified, continuously operating commercial system that manufactures emotion and scarcity like the NBA does.

Basketball is a sport of extreme individualism. Superstars win games with last-second shots, data systems are standardized, the league's narrative is unified, and the US industry excels at creating stars. From draft night, debut, All-Star game, MVP, playoffs to the championship, every milestone can be packaged as an asset.

In contrast, the football world is too fragmented. National teams, leagues, clubs, the Champions League, sponsors, and broadcasting rights systems are disconnected from each other, making it difficult to form a unified and sustained financial narrative like the NBA.

It's easy to understand that the World Cup patch mentioned at the beginning is FIFA's active attempt to create "financial raw materials" for high-priced sports cards in the future.

The NBA Took 70 Years to Turn Cardboard into a Financial Asset

Many in the crypto space might have learned about sports cards during the NFT boom, but the NBA sports card market has been trading for over 70 years.

In 1948, Bowman released the first set of NBA player cards; in 1986, Fleer released the Michael Jordan rookie card that would later change the entire industry. During the 1990s, fueled by the Jordan era and the NBA's global expansion, the sports card market experienced its first mass frenzy. Almost every mall, convenience store, and toy store in America was selling cards.

But soon, the industry entered its first major crash.

In the late 1990s, a large number of publishers went on a crazy overproduction spree, printing cards uncontrollably, leading the market into a massive bear market. This period was later dubbed by the collecting community the "Junk Wax Era."

The game-changer was the "Scarcity Revolution" post-2000.

In 2003, LeBron James entered the NBA. That same year, Upper Deck launched the Exquisite series, thoroughly introducing concepts like autographs, jersey patches, limited numbering, and 1/1s into the high-end card market.

From then on, sports cards began to transform into a form of alternative financial assets.

They started to have clear numbering, scarcity tiers, long-term price curves, grading systems, auction platforms, professional market makers, and a massive secondary market.

During the pandemic, grading agencies like PSA and BGS rose to prominence, auction platforms like eBay, Goldin, and PWCC matured, breakers started live-streaming box breaks, and the entire industry gradually formed a complete ecosystem.

The scale of this market is far beyond imagination. According to 2025 data, the global sports card market has reached approximately $11.5 billion. Basketball cards remain the most profitable core category, while autographed cards and patch cards are the fastest-growing high-end assets.

Meanwhile, grading companies have essentially become genuine "platform businesses."

In 2025, PSA's parent company, Collectors, acquired Beckett (BGS's parent company), pushing the entire industry towards greater financialization and centralization.

In the past few years, grading companies have essentially become very close to the "asset issuance layer" in the crypto world. PSA's annual revenue in 2024 exceeded $300 million. In today's sports card world, whether a piece of cardboard can go from $500 to $5,000 often depends solely on whether it ends up sealed in a PSA plastic slab.

Furthermore, many physical "exchanges" dedicated to sports cards have emerged globally. Atlanta's CardsHQ has been called by many media outlets the "world's largest sports card store." It's not just a card shop; it's a large financial entertainment venue that integrates live box breaks, auctions, KOLs, community, and trading.

Today's NBA sports card market is actually very close to the crypto world.

It has stood the test of time, with long-term bull and bear cycles, massive secondary liquidity, long-term "diamond hands," KOL shilling, and emotional trading betting on the next GOAT.

Many sports card break communities resemble meme communities, with streamers setting the pace, communities shouting buys, gambling on rookies, trading on scarcity narratives, and experiencing FOMO box openings...

Collective Emotion Can Become an Asset

What gives this market sustained liquidity and allows it to be financialized, just like other assets, relies on "narrative."

In June of last year, a 2024 Topps Now Paris Olympics 1/1 Stephen Curry autograph card sold for $518,500 at Goldin Auctions.

This card was valuable because it was tied to a single moment. During the 2024 Paris Olympics men's basketball final, Curry hit consecutive crucial three-pointers and made that iconic "night-night" gesture to the French team.

So, the price of a card is deeply intertwined with the "narrative moment" hyped behind it. That shot, that game, that roar from the crowd, that feeling of "I witnessed history firsthand."

However, this price is not extreme in the top-tier sports card market. In 2021, Curry's Rookie Logoman Autograph 1/1 sold for $5.9 million.

This is the most profound change in the sports collectibles market in recent years. Prices are no longer strictly bound by absolute time or scarcity but are defined by different "storytelling spins."

This is essentially the same logic as the booming prediction markets. On Polymarket, we trade on whether Trump will be elected, whether Bitcoin can hit a new all-time high, or whether a certain movie will win an Oscar.

In the sports card market, they trade on whether Lamine Yamal will become the next king of football, whether Haaland can win the World Cup, or whether a certain rookie will become the future GOAT.

Prediction markets sell "probability of outcomes," while sports cards sell "historical ownership." Both are essentially pre-pricing collective emotions.

What NFTs Couldn't Do

Crypto players burned by NFTs might find this chain of "turning emotion into assets" familiar.

But NFT projects all face the same insurmountable problem: a lack of ability to continuously produce "new stories."

A small image (PFP) can be very popular for a period after minting. However, once the hype fades, the project team can only resort to constantly manufacturing new roadmaps, new airdrops, new collaborations, and new utilities to barely maintain market consensus.

After an infinite loop, they eventually have to launch a new project, until there are no buyers left.

But sports are different. Sports are the world's perpetual "emotion-producing machine."

It automatically updates its storyline every single day, and it never ends. Someone hits a game-winner, someone gets injured, someone seeks revenge, someone retires, someone becomes a legend overnight, someone rises from benchwarmer to star.

Its narrative isn't concocted by a project team; it's continuously generated by the real world.

I've always enjoyed watching the UFC. Dana White is one of the best sports promoters of the past decade when it comes to "attention finance."

UFC isn't selling tickets to a fight; it sells rivalries, trash talk, revenge storylines, underdog triumphs, dynasty falls – it's constantly fermenting emotions and dramatic stories.

People won't pay for "statistics," but they will always pay for a "story."

In reality, the NBA has been operating the same way for years.

On one hand, older fans constantly complain about the league's "entertainment-ization" – controversial reffing, superstar team-ups, drama, manufactured hype, and increased scripted feel. On the other hand, the undeniable fact is that the NBA's appeal and commercial value among young people are stronger than ever.

The Financialization of Sports Leagues

The logic of sports consumption today, and even the entire entertainment industry's consumption, has changed.

Many young people may not watch a full game, but they will watch trash talk, memes, clips on short-video platforms, player personas, social media drama, and post-game interviews.

Sports increasingly resemble a never-ending, large-scale reality show IP. Sports cards have become the most direct financial outlet for these emotions.

During the NFT bull market, project teams also loudly proclaimed that Web3 would redefine sports collectibles. But looking back now, it's the traditional sports leagues that have truly completed "assetization" first. Because they possess what Web3 lacks: real people, real games, and real collective emotional consensus.

In today's world of universal financialization, sports are not just a perpetual motion machine producing "future history," but are also becoming a platform for issuing financial assets.