As Founder and Chairman & CEO of Fanatics, Michael Rubin has transformed a sports merchandise retailer into a global platform spanning apparel, collectibles, trading cards, betting, events, advertising and media. Fanatics now expects roughly $13 billion in revenue in 2026, with more than 22,000 employees across 80 offices.
Rubin built Fanatics around a simple proposition to own more of the relationship between sports and its fans. That thinking has taken the company into areas that once operated as separate businesses. Fanatics launched collectibles and betting in 2021, events in 2023, markets and advertising in 2025, and Fanatics Studios in 2026.
The strategy reflects a pattern that began long before Fanatics. Michael Rubin was an entrepreneur from childhood, opening a ski-tuning business in his parents’ basement at 12. He later founded GSI Commerce, an e-commerce company that eBay bought for $2.4 billion in 2011. Rubin then bought back several consumer businesses, including Fanatics, and began rebuilding it around speed, scale and control of the supply chain.
His most consequential move was to look beyond merchandise. Fanatics secured major rights across professional sports and entered trading cards, where Rubin sought to reshape a century-old industry. The company acquired Topps and built a collectibles business around direct relationships with leagues, athletes and collectors. While his approach has often been aggressive, he has demonstrated an unusual ability to turn relationships across sport, entertainment and business into commercial leverage.
Beyond business, Michael Rubin is Co-Chair of REFORM Alliance, which campaigns to reform probation and parole. Since its founding, the organisation has helped pass 23 bipartisan laws across 12 states, affecting more than 850,000 people.
Rubin’s career is ultimately a study in leverage: spotting a fragmented market, building the relationships to control it, and then expanding into the next part of the fan’s world. That is what makes his perspective on sports, consumer businesses, dealmaking and modern fandom particularly distinctive.
