This year’s Super Bowl matchup between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks was not predicted by many NFL fans before the season began, and it’s become a problem for the league’s exclusive supplier of Nike adult products and one of the country’s largest online apparel retailers.
Fanatics issued an apology on Monday, Feb. 2, ahead of Super Bowl 60 after complaints about jersey availability and quality from Seahawks and Patriots fans. The backlash even sparked an #endfanatics hashtag on social media with consumers posting photos of jerseys that were allegedly of poor quality.
The company eventually acknowledged it could not keep up with demand in recent weeks, but pushed back on alleged issues regarding product quality associated with its Super Bowl gear.
‘We’ve let Patriots and Seahawks fans down with product availability – we own that and we are sorry,’ Fanatics said in a statement posted to social media.
The company went on to note that this predicament is, in part, due to the limited on-field expectations the Seahawks and Patriots had before the season began.
‘This Super Bowl matchup has created unprecedented challenges for us because of the massive surge in demand we saw from Patriots and Seahawks fans,’ Fanatics wrote. ‘Both teams went from missing the playoffs last season to being in the Super Bowl, an incredibly rare occurrence that led to these two fanbases buying nearly 400% more jerseys since Thanksgiving vs. last year. Even though we ordered substantially more jerseys for these teams than ever before, we’ve struggled to meet the overwhelming demand to keep team color jerseys in stock, which we know is your expectation. As sports fans, we understand your frustration and we will work tirelessly to be better.’
But Fanatics emphasized that its available alternate jersey options are identical to its standard Nike replica game jerseys, ‘despite some unflattering photos’ featured on social media. Fanatics added customers can still return any product they’re not fully satisfied with free of charge, as has been the company’s long-standing policy.
The NFL and Fanatics agreed to a 10-year partnership in 2018 that granted Fanatics exclusive consumer product licensing rights to manufacture and distribute all Nike NFL adult products (jerseys, sideline apparel and fan gear) sold through the retail community, including NFLShop.com and NFL teams. The NFL has also invested more than $400 million in Fanatics over the past decade.