Sports Champion T-Shirts, Delivered Just After the Buzzer

At 6:03 p.m. on Sunday, March 12, Northwestern University’s men’s basketball team officially earned its first NCAA Tournament berth in the school’s history. At 6:07, Fanatics Inc., the world’s largest sports apparel retailer, posted its newest product, a purple Northwestern T-shirt that reads “Chicago Is Dancin’: The Road to the Final Four.”

That’s the speed at which licensed sports merchandise moves now: minutes and seconds, not hours and days. If you’ve gone online to buy a shirt, hat, or jersey for your favorite team, you’ve likely bought it from Fanatics—whether you knew it or not. In the past five years, Fanatics has crept into every facet of the sports apparel industry. “This is the biggest change to a single marketplace that we’ve seen in a decade or two,” says Marty Brochstein, a senior vice president at the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association.