Fanatics Develops Data-Driven Engine to Personalize Sports Commerce
Sports retail giant Fanatics is no longer just selling jerseys. The company is now engineering a real-time purchase prediction machine built on AI-powered fan data signals, and the scale of what it has assembled is striking.
Fanatics logs more than 2 billion fan signals daily across its commerce, collectibles, betting and gaming services, generated by over 100 million fans through browsing, purchasing and engagement activity across Fanatics-owned properties. The company is now building systems designed to turn those signals into sales before a fan even knows what they are looking for.
To make it happen, Fanatics has partnered with Google Cloud to deploy AI-powered product discovery across its digital storefronts, using behavioral data to surface the right product at the moment purchase intent peaks.
The push is rooted in a real problem. Justin Tsai, Fanatics Commerce’s chief product officer, told Sports Business Journal that the company spent months in user interviews and focus groups identifying shopping friction, with product discovery ranking as the number one pain point. The challenge grows even sharper during major events, Fanatics added roughly 2,400 new products during March Madness alone, meaning search quality directly determines whether new inventory actually sells.
At the center of Fanatics’ strategy is a first-party data layer called FanGraph. FanGraph connects fan data across its commerce, collectibles, sportsbook and live events businesses, giving the company a consolidated profile that segments fans by team affiliation, player loyalty and purchase history. Those AI-powered fan data signals are the engine behind personalization at scale.
Fanatics has also launched an advertising network built on FanGraph, allowing brand partners to reach fans whose purchase behavior, team loyalties and betting activity are all visible within a single profile, a fundamentally different proposition from standard digital advertising.
The infrastructure behind this is substantial. Fanatics operates more than 2,000 retail locations and holds licensing deals with more than 900 sports properties, including major professional leagues, players associations and college conferences, with direct commercial relationships spanning more than 5,000 athletes and celebrities. Every transaction feeds data back into the fan profile.
Beyond search, Fanatics selected eCommerce technology company Rokt to surface offers to fans before and after checkout across Fanatics-owned platforms and partner team and league sites. Rokt’s network processes more than 7.5 billion transactions annually, matching what a fan is buying in the moment to relevant follow-on offers rather than relying on purchase history alone.
Sports commerce runs on moments, demand spikes when a team wins, when a player breaks a record, or when a tournament bracket shifts. A fan searching for a jersey three hours after a playoff win converts very differently than one shopping on a Tuesday in October. Fanatics is betting that its AI-powered fan data signals are sharp enough to catch that fan at exactly the right time.
