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Tom Brady attends Fanatics and Topps ‘Hobby Rip Night’ Event with Michael Rubin, Tom Brady, Kevin Hart and Travis Scott on September 30, 2023 in Linwood, New Jersey. 

Dave Kotinsky | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images

Since the New York Comic-Con launched in 2006, the convention has evolved well beyond comics into a wide-ranging fandom celebration of anime, video games, television, movies and all things pop culture, drawing more than 200,000 attendees last year.

Now, Fanatics wants to do the same thing but for sports, hosting a three-day event in New York City in August that is aiming be at the center of sports fandom, culture and collecting.

Lance Fensterman, CEO of Fanatics Events and the former president of ReedPop — where he produced pop culture events like New York Comic-Con, Complex-Con, and Star Wars Celebration — said he sees several parallels between pop culture fans and sports fans. However, he noted, while events like New York Comic-Con have evolved to embrace multiple difference fanbases and communities, the sports-focused event space is “ready to be disrupted a bit.”

“You’ve got collector shows and card shows, and there are thousands of those across the U.S., and they’re awesome for collectors. You also have league- and team-sponsored fan fests that are very specific for that sport or team,” Fensterman said. “What we’re trying to do is combine the best elements of all of that, and then culture and entertainment.”

The three-day event, called Fanatics Fest NYC, will be held at New York City’s Javits Center, the massive expo center that has hosted the New York Comic-Con, the New York International Auto Show, and other big conventions and events. The event will feature multiple stages and theatres, interactive features and games, merchandise and trading card areas, and a museum display of rare cards and sports memorabilia. Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Eli and Peyton Manning, Kevin Durant, Sabrina Ionescu and Hulk Hogan are just some of the big sports names scheduled to appear, Fensterman said.

The event will also look to go beyond sports, integrating entrepreneurs, entertainers and cultural influencers into the programming, Fensterman said, providing a platform to talk about how sports serve as a platform for inspiration. There will be exclusive apparel collaborations and a variety of unique products from the hundreds of teams and leagues that are Fanatics partners, which includes nearly every U.S. professional sports entity such as the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, NHL, MLS, UFC, and WWE.

“Those are the moments that we get excited about, and we just don’t see it being done anywhere else in the world of live sports events,” Fensterman said.

Fanatics Events, which was launched last July in partnership with Endeavor-owned talent management company IMG, held its first large-scale activation last week, overseeing WWE World at WrestleMania, a five-day festival that ran alongside WWE’s premier event in Philadelphia. The festival was the highest-grossing and most-attended fan event in WWE history, according to Fanatics.

Fanatics Events’ WWE World at WrestleMania, a five-day festival that ran alongside WWE’s premier event in Philadelphia.

Fanatics

With this broader sports effort, the Fanatics Fest NYC will help the Fanatics Events team pursue coinciding business goals: elevating the other Fanatics vertical businesses and creating a new business around sports events.

Tickets for the event will range from $20 to $400, and general admission adult tickets will be priced at $50 per day. Fensterman said his goal is to draw between 50,000 and 100,000 fans for this inaugural event, which could potentially spawn other smaller-scale events across the country. The company will also look to host events in international markets, aiding its league partners looking to build fanbases abroad, he said.

These new set of events will also help to fuel the other business lines of the company: its commerce and merchandise division, its collectibles and trading cards business, its livestream shopping business, and its sports betting division.

Fanatics, the three-time CNBC Disruptor 50 company which ranked No. 21 in 2022, has evolved beyond the merchandise roots that Michael Rubin founded the company on. The company’s quick ascension has helped it garner a more than $31 billion valuation and put it on a path for a likely IPO. It has also put a magnifying glass on the company’s moves. The company says it was incorrectly blamed for issues related to Major League Baseball jerseys this spring, while it also finds itself in a legal battle with DraftKings over its expansion into sports betting.

Fanatics plans to reach profitability faster than anyone in the betting industry, says CEO Matt King

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Apple’s 3-day loss in market cap swells to almost $640 billion

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Apple's 3-day loss in market cap swells to almost 0 billion

(L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook, Vivek Ramaswamy and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2025.

Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images

While the stock market broadly fared better on Monday than in the prior two trading days, Apple got hammered once again, losing 3.7%, as concerns mounted that the company will take a major hit from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

The sell-off brings Apple’s three-day rout to 19%, a downdraft that has wiped out $638 billion in market cap.

Apple is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war, analyst say, due largely to its reliance on China, which is facing 54% tariffs. Although Apple has production in India, Vietnam and Thailand, those countries also face increased tariffs as part of Trump’s sweeping plan.

Among tech’s megacap companies, Apple is having the roughest stretch. On Monday, the only stocks to drop in that group of seven were Apple, Microsoft and Tesla.

The Nasdaq finished almost barely up on Monday after plummeting 10% last week, its worst performance in more than five years.

Analysts say Apple will likely either need to raise prices or eat additional tariff costs when the new duties come into effect. UBS analysts estimated on Monday that Apple’s highest-end iPhone could rise in price by about $350, or around 30%, from its current price of $1,199.

Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or the company could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share. Apple may also be able to rearrange its supply chain so that imports to the U.S. come from other countries with lower tariffs.

Apple declined to comment on the tariffs.

WATCH: Apple plummets on Trump tariffs

Apple plummets on Trump tariffs: Here's what you need to know

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Apple’s highest-end iPhone could see $350 price hike in U.S. on Trump tariffs, analyst predicts

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Apple's highest-end iPhone could see 0 price hike in U.S. on Trump tariffs, analyst predicts

A customer checks Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Plus (right) and Apple’s latest iPhone 16 Pro Max (left) series displayed for sale at Master Arts Shop in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, on Sept. 26, 2024.

Firdous Nazir | Nurphoto | Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs could lead Apple to raise the price of the iPhone 16 Pro Max by as much as $350 in the U.S., UBS analysts estimated Monday.

The iPhone 16 Pro Max is Apple’s highest-end iPhone on the market, and currently retails for $1,199. UBS is predicting a nearly 30% increase in retail price for units that were manufactured in China.

Apple’s $999 phone, the iPhone 16 Pro, could see a smaller $120 price increase, if the company has it manufactured in India, the UBS analysts wrote.

Shares of Apple have plummeted 20% over the past three trading days, wiping out nearly $640 billion in market cap, on concern that Trump’s tariffs will force the company to raise prices just as consumers are losing buying power.

“Based on the checks we have done at a company level, there is a lot of uncertainty about how the increased cost sharing will be done with suppliers, the extent to which costs can be passed on to end-customers, and the duration of tariffs,” UBS analyst Sundeep Gantori wrote in the note.

Apple, which does the majority of its manufacturing in China, is one of the most exposed companies to a trade war. China has a potential incoming 54% tariff rate — before new increases were proposed Monday. Smaller tariffs were also placed on secondary production locations, such as India, Vietnam and Thailand.

JPMorgan Chase analysts predicted last week that Apple could raise its prices 6% across the world to offset the U.S. tariffs. Barclays analyst Tim Long wrote that he expects Apple to raise prices, or it could suffer as much as a 15% cut to earnings per share.

If Apple were to relocate iPhone production to the U.S. — a move that most supply chain experts say is impossible — Wedbush’s Dan Ives predicts an iPhone could cost $3,500.

Morgan Stanley analysts on Friday said Apple could absorb additional tariff costs of about $34 billion annually. They wrote that although Apple has diversified its production in recent years to additional countries — so-called friendshoring — those countries could also end up with tariffs, reducing Apple’s flexibility.

After last week’s “reciprocal tariff announcement, there becomes very little differentiation in friend shoring vs. manufacturing in China — if the product is not made in the US, it will be subject to a hefty import tariff,” Morgan Stanley wrote.

Last week, the firm estimated that Apple may raise its prices across its product lines in the U.S. by 17% to 18%. Apple could also get exemptions from the U.S. government for its products.

WATCH: Apple plummets on Trump tariffs

Apple plummets on Trump tariffs: Here's what you need to know

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Elon Musk’s brother slams Trump tariffs, calls them ‘permanent tax on the American consumer’

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Elon Musk's brother slams Trump tariffs, calls them 'permanent tax on the American consumer'

Kimbal Musk, co-founder of The Kitchen Community, speaks during the annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, May 3, 2016.

Patrick T. Fallon  | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Elon Musk’s younger brother, Kimbal, took to the social network X on Monday to lambaste President Donald Trump’s tariffs, calling them a “structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.” He also said Trump appears to be the “most high tax American President in generations.”

“Even if he is successful in bringing jobs on shore through the tariff tax, prices will remain high and the tax on consumption will remain the form of higher prices because we are simply not as good at making things,” Kimbal Musk wrote on X, one of the companies in his brother’s extensive portfolio.

The younger Musk owns a restaurant chain called The Kitchen, is a board member at Tesla and a former director at SpaceX and Chipotle. He has also co-founded and invested in other food and tech startups, including Square Roots, an indoor farming company, and Nova Sky Stories, a creator of drone light shows that he bought from Intel.

Elon Musk is a top advisor to Trump, overseeing the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an effort to drastically cut federal spending, largely through layoffs, and consolidate or eliminate agencies and regulations. However, his relationship with some key figures in the Trump administration has been showing signs of strain in recent days as the president’s sweeping tariffs have led to a dramatic selloff in stocks, including for Tesla, which is down 42% this year and just wrapped up its worst quarter since 2022.

Over the weekend, Elon Musk took aim at Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro, disparaging his qualifications in a post on X.

“A PhD in Econ from Harvard is a bad thing, not a good thing,” Musk wrote, after Navarro told CNN on Saturday that “The market will find a bottom” and that the Dow will “hit 50,000 during Trump’s term.” It’s currently at about 38,200.

Musk also said that Navarro hasn’t built “sh—.” Navarro told CNBC on Monday that Musk is “not a car manufacturer” but rather a “car assembler,” dependent on parts from Japan, China and Taiwan.

Tesla was seeking a more moderate approach to trade and tariffs in a recent letter to the U.S. Trade Representative.

According to Federal Election Commission filings, Kimbal Musk this year has contributed funds to the Libertarian National Committee and Libertarian Party of Connecticut. In 2024, while his brother became the biggest financial backer and promoter of Trump, Kimbal donated to Unite America PAC, a group that markets itself as a “philanthropic venture fund that invests in nonpartisan election reform to foster a more representative and functional government.”

A representative for Kimbal Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Tesla Q1 deliveries worse than expected

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