Fanatics has ereportedly reached a deal with Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association to replace Topps as the exclusive licensee of MLB baseball cards. 

The loss of the MLB partnership has canceled a deal announced earlier this year that would have made Topps a publicly traded company.

ESPN reported Thursday that it had obtained a memo from the MLB Players Association that Fanatics had secured the exclusive licensee for baseball cards once its current licensing agreements expire at the end of next year. The Topps license has been in place since 1952.

The Fanatics deal also includes the players’ unions for the NBA and the NFL. Panini has exclusive licenses with the NBA, the NFL and their unions, while Upper Deck has an exclusive deal with the NHL and the National Hockey League Players Association.

According to the Wall Street Journal, all three unions-the MLBPA, NBPA and NFLPA-will have stakes in the entity that will now have control of “the most lucrative sports trading card assets in the country.” MLB and the NBA have also struck deals with the new business and will also have a stake. 

Fanatics and MLB have not commented on the deal.

On Friday, hedge fund Mudrick Capital said in a statement that its deal to merge Topps with a “blank check” company to take it public “has been terminated by mutual agreement.” Mudrick’s so-called special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, was anticipated to complete a merger with Topps on August 27 and start trading on the over-the-counter market on August 30.

Topps planned to capitalize on the demand for non-fungible tokens by promoting baseball-related digital property with the deal valued at $1.3 billion.

“Topps expects to be able to produce substantially all its current licensed baseball products through 2025 under its existing agreement,” the company stated in a press release.

In June, Fanatics started a digital collectibles firm, Candy Digital, which has teamed up with the MLB to introduce a series of nonfungible tokens. Fanatics has also approached several executives from sports teams, gambling companies and tech firms as it considers expanding into ticketing, betting and gambling. 

A source close to Fanatics told the New York Times that Fanatics might explore acquiring one of the three major card companies: Panini, Upper Deck or Topps.

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