Fanatics, the Michael Rubin-led sports juggernaut, is getting into the entertainment business in a major way.
The company is partnering with OBB Media to launch a new joint venture, Fanatics Studios, with a flurry of major deals lined up to support the studio at launch, including with LA28, ESPN, WWE and MLB. The venture plans to produce live events, unscripted and scripted original series, feature films and digital content.
“I’m allergic to thin, vanity shingle announcements. So much work needs to go on behind the scenes to make a project real,” says OBB Media founder and CEO Michael D. Ratner, who will also lead Fanatics Studios. “We’re not here announcing development deals, we want to talk about what we’re really doing.”
“I think that when you look at the work that’s been done pre-launch, it amounts to over nine figures in revenue in year one of the business,” Ratner adds. “We really wanted to go and become the mainstay player and the preeminent sports content studio.”
The deals that the company has lined up include a strategic partnership with the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with plans to produce a slew of content around the event, including an official Olympics film, with Ratner promising a theatrical release.
And it includes a major content deal with ESPN, which sees Fanatics Studios join the sports media giant and Full Day Production as a producer of the 2026 ESPY Awards. Fanatics Studios will also produce hours of additional content for ESPN over the next two years, including further installments of its Fanatics Fest docuseries, which debuted last year.
Fanatics and OBB Media first joined forces for Fanatics Fest, the live event in New York that brings together sports and pop culture, with OBB producing the docuseries. They also previously announced plans for the Fanatics Flag Football Classic, which will be played in Saudi Arabia and will see Tom Brady come out of retirement. That event will air on Fox.
However, the company also said Tuesday that it was working on a docuseries following Brady as he comes out of retirement to play in the flag football event, and gears up to potentially make a push for the 2028 Olympics, where flag football will be a sport.
“I think if I had to highlight what’s inherent to the DNA of the business that Michael and I intend to build here, it’s really about creating IP that could then be the beneficiary of the Fanatics ecosystem and flywheel,” Ratner says. “And we want to create big, sticky, repeatable franchises, formats that have annuity value, and the Flag Football Classic is a perfect example of that. So I think you should expect to see a lot more of that.”
The company also announced deals with the WWE and MLB, with Fanatics Studios becoming a partner for many of WWE’s digital shows and podcasts, including What Do You Wanna Talk About with Cody Rhodes, Six Feet Under with The Undertaker, What’s Your Story? with Steph McMahon and The Raw Recap Show hosted by Megan Morant and Sam Roberts, with plans for a new food travel show called YEE(A)T with the Usos, featuring brothers Jimmy and Jey Uso.
The MLB deal will also include a slate of content around the sport, beginning with a docuseries around the 2026 World Baseball Classic.
Rubin, of course, is one of the most connected people on planet earth, particularly when it comes to power players in the world of sports and popular culture.
“Michael’s a dream partner. He’s got these amazing relationships,” Ratner says. “I think that our vision for this studio is that we’re going to be able to draw upon the many different businesses that Fanatics is in… I think Michael’s an incredible thought partner, he’s an incredible strategist, he’s an incredible networker, so I think we’ll draw on Michael’s ability to do all of that stuff.”
“I’m incredibly excited about launching Fanatics Studios and adding an important content and media business to our growing sports platform that also supports all of our existing businesses,” says Rubin in a statement. “We could not have dreamed up a better partner in Michael Ratner and the team at OBB, and together we are going to continue pushing our mission of relentlessly enhancing the fan experience by creating content that brings fans closer than ever to the teams, players, sports, cultural moments and events that they love in a way that’s never been done before.”
Fanatics, of course, is trying to carve out its own piece of the sports ecosystem, leveraging Rubin’s vast rolodex. It is a dominant player in merchandise and apparel, and bought a dominant stake in the collectibles business through a deal with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s Topps.
It is also in the sports betting space and recently expanded into prediction markets. In other words, if it touches sports, Fanatics is in the business. And there is no question that sports and sports-adjacent content have been in high demand in recent years.
OBB Media, meanwhile, has forged a path as an independent studio at a challenging time for the business, with shows that include Kevin Hart’s Cold as Balls and Speed Goes Pro featuring iShowSpeed.
“It’s been a long time coming, but over a lot of 2025 we were head down working on this, having the conversations at the highest level with many of the leagues that you see, with many of the networks,” Ratner says. “We’ve been really trying to make this impactful.”
Read the full article here
