Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Planet Xiao Hua
The World Cup is about to kick off. Beyond the prediction markets gearing up, another industry is quietly heating up.
Recently, FIFA announced a new rule: all players making their first World Cup appearance must wear a 'World Cup debut patch' on their jerseys. This means that even globally famous superstars like Erling Haaland or Lamine Yamal, who have never set foot on a World Cup pitch before, must wear this special badge. Some national teams returning to the World Cup after many years may even have the entire squad wearing them.
This isn't just about adding a 'ceremonial touch' for World Cup rookies. Those familiar with the sports trading card industry know that this patch will be removed, authenticated, cut up after the tournament, and then embedded into trading cards. Ultimately, it might become a 1/1 debut autograph card, graded, auctioned, traded, potentially fetching a price in the future that exceeds that of a supercar.
Just this May, FIFA announced a long-term exclusive collectibles licensing deal with Fanatics. The future ecosystem of World Cup-related trading cards, stickers, and collectibles will officially enter the Fanatics/Topps era.
You might not collect trading cards, but it's worth noting that behind these small cards lies an alternative asset world exceeding $10 billion in scale, with a vast secondary market and long-term bull/bear cycles.
Simultaneously, the entire sports world is entering a new era of 'fragmented finance.'
Sports Leagues "Slicing History for Sale"
In the past, fans cared about 'a jersey witnessing a historic moment.' Now, what people might care about is 'how many pieces of history can this jersey be split into.'
After all, one jersey can belong to dozens of cards, hundreds of buyers, be resold countless times in the future, and even form a continuously rising or sharply fluctuating price curve.
A piece of fabric might travel from a player's chest to a card factory, into a blind box, then to a grading company, an auction house, and finally become an alternative asset in someone's investment portfolio.
Soccer trading cards aren't new. Since the 1970 World Cup, Panini has established the World Cup sticker and trading card system. Many fans' childhoods started with a World Cup sticker album.
However, it has never managed to build a mature, highly liquid 'sports financial asset system' like the NBA has.
Those unfamiliar might find it strange: soccer has the largest global fan base, and superstar commercial value is extremely high, yet soccer card prices, liquidity, and secondary market depth have long been unable to compare with the NBA.
The reason behind this is that the NBA is inherently more suited for 'assetization,' whereas soccer lacks a highly unified, continuous system of manufacturing emotion and scarcity like the NBA's commercial operation.
Basketball is a sport of high individual heroism, with superstars hitting game-winners, a standardized statistics system, unified league narratives, and an American industry exceptionally skilled at star-making. From draft night, debut, All-Star, MVP, playoffs to championship, every node can be packaged as an asset.
But the soccer world is too fragmented. National teams, leagues, clubs, Champions League, sponsors, and copyright systems are all compartmentalized, making it difficult to form the unified and continuous financial narrative of the NBA.
It's not hard to understand. The World Cup patch mentioned at the beginning is FIFA actively trying to manufacture 'financial raw materials' for future high-value trading cards.
The NBA Spent 70 Years Turning Paper into Financial Assets
Many in the crypto space may have learned about trading cards during the NFT boom, but the NBA trading card market has actually been trading for over 70 years.
In 1948, Bowman released the first batch of NBA player cards. In 1986, Fleer released that Michael Jordan rookie card which later transformed the entire industry. In the 1990s, with the Jordan era and NBA global expansion, the trading card market entered its first wave of mass frenzy. Back then, almost every mall, convenience store, and toy store in America sold cards.
But soon, the industry experienced its first major crash.
In the late '90s, numerous issuers went on a printing spree, production went unchecked, and the market entered a major bear market. This period was later even dubbed the "Junk Wax Era" by the collecting community.
What changed the industry was the 'scarcity revolution' post-2000.
In 2003, LeBron James entered the NBA. That same year, Upper Deck launched the Exquisite series, bringing concepts like autographs, jersey patches, limited numbering, and 1/1 cards into the high-end card market for good.
From then on, trading cards began to transform into alternative financial assets.
They began to have clear numbering, scarcity tiers, long-term price curves, grading systems, auction platforms, professional market makers, and a vast secondary market.
During the pandemic, grading companies like PSA and BGS rose, platforms like eBay, Goldin, and PWCC matured, 'breakers' started live-streaming box openings, and the entire industry gradually formed a complete ecosystem.
The scale of this market is far beyond imagination. According to 2025 data, the global sports trading card market has reached approximately $11.5 billion. Basketball cards remain the most profitable core category in the industry, while autograph and patch cards are the fastest-growing high-end assets.
Simultaneously, grading companies have even become de facto "platform businesses."
In 2025, Collectors, the parent company of PSA, completed the acquisition of Beckett (parent of BGS). The entire industry is moving towards higher financialization and consolidation.
Over the past few years, grading companies have essentially become very close to the "asset issuance layer" in Crypto. PSA's annual revenue in 2024 already exceeded $300 million. In today's trading card world, whether a piece of paper goes from $500 to $5,000 often depends solely on whether it ultimately gets sealed inside a PSA plastic slab.
Furthermore, offline "exchanges" specifically centered around trading cards have emerged globally. CardsHQ in Atlanta, USA, is called the "world's largest trading card store" by many media outlets. It's not just about selling cards; it's a large-scale financial entertainment venue integrating live breaks, auctions, KOLs, communities, and trading.
Today's NBA trading card market is actually very close to the Crypto world.
It has stood the test of time, has long-term bull/bear cycles, massive secondary liquidity, long-term holders ("diamond hands"), KOL shilling, and emotional trading betting on future GOATs.
Many trading card break communities are like meme communities: streamers driving hype, community shilling, betting on rookies, speculating on scarcity narratives, FOMO-driven box openings...
Collective Emotion Can Become an Asset
What gives this market sustained liquidity and makes it financeable, like any other asset, relies on "narrative."
Last June, a Stephen Curry 2024 Topps Now Paris Olympics 1/1 autograph card sold for $518,500 at Goldin Auctions.
This card is valuable because it's tied to a moment. In the 2024 Paris Olympics men's basketball final, Curry hit consecutive clutch three-pointers and made his classic "night-night" (you can go home to sleep) gesture towards France.
So, a card's price is deeply tied to the "narrative moment" hyped behind it. That shot, that game, that cheer, that "I witnessed history live" emotion.
However, this price isn't outrageous in the top-tier trading card market. In 2021, Curry's Rookie Logoman Autograph 1/1 sold for $5.9 million.
This is the most profound change in the sports collectibles market over the past few years. Price is no longer bound solely by absolute time or scarcity but is defined by different "story-driven hype."
This is essentially the same logic as the booming prediction markets. On Polymarket, we trade on whether Trump will be elected, whether Bitcoin will hit a new high, whether a movie will win an Oscar.
In the trading card market, they trade on whether Yamal will become the next soccer king, whether Haaland can win the World Cup, whether a certain rookie will become the future GOAT.
Prediction markets sell "outcome probability"; trading cards sell "ownership of history." At their core, both are about pricing collective emotion in advance.
What NFTs Couldn't Achieve
Crypto players burned by NFTs might find this chain of "emotion turning into assets" familiar.
But all NFT projects face the same unsolvable problem: a lack of the ability to continuously produce "new stories."
A small picture can be hot for a while after mint, but once the hype fades, project teams can only desperately manufacture: new roadmaps, new airdrops, new collaborations, new utility to barely maintain market consensus.
After infinite loops, they can only launch new projects until there are no buyers left.
But sports are different. Sports is the world's perpetual motion "emotion-generating machine."
It automatically updates its plot daily, and it never ends. Someone hits a game-winner, someone gets injured, someone seeks revenge, someone retires, someone becomes an overnight legend, someone rises from the bench to stardom.
Its narratives aren't fabricated by project teams; they are continuously happening in the real world.
I've always enjoyed watching UFC. Dana White has been one of the sports operators who best understands "attention finance" over the past decade.
UFC isn't selling tickets to a fighting match; it's selling rivalries, trash-talking feuds, revenge plots, underdog stories, dynasty collapses — constantly brewing emotions and dramatic stories.
People won't pay for "technical stats," but they will always pay for "narratives."
In fact, the NBA has been the same in recent years.
On one hand, old fans constantly complain about the league's "entertainment-ization" — referee controversies, superstar team-ups, drama, league hype, an increasing sense of scripting. But on the other hand, the undeniable fact is that the NBA's reach among young people and its commercial value are stronger than ever.
The Financialization of Sports Leagues
Today's sports consumption, and indeed the entire entertainment industry's consumption logic, has changed.
Many young people might not watch full games, but they watch trash talk, memes, short video clips, athlete personas, social media drama, post-game interviews.
Sports are increasingly becoming a never-ending, large-scale reality show IP. And trading cards have become the most direct financialization outlet for these emotions.
During the NFT bull market, project teams also loudly proclaimed that Web3 would redefine sports collectibles. But looking back now, it's the traditional sports leagues that have actually completed "assetization" first. Because they possess what Web3 lacks: real people, real games, real collective emotional consensus.
In today's era of universal financialization, sports is not just a perpetual motion machine manufacturing "future history," but is also becoming a platform for issuing financial assets.
