In sports licensing a company gets the right to use the marks and images of clubs, leagues, events, stadiums or athletes on its products, paying royalties. It is a growing market: in 2025 licensed sports products sold $44.4 billion worldwide. The delicate part is rights: the team’s marks, the players’ images and the image of the whole team can belong to different owners.
How big it is
According to Licensing International’s Global Licensing Industry Study, in 2025 sports reached $44.4 billion in retail sales, up 8.5%: it is the third-largest licensing category with 11.4% of the market, the highest share the study has ever recorded (Licensing International).
Who holds which rights
- The club or body: name, crest, colours, shirts and marks of the team, league, event or stadium.
- The athlete: their own image, when it is not tied to the team’s marks.
- Collective uses: products with many players or many teams, such as sticker collections.
In Italian football, for example, a player can freely use their own image in plain clothes or neutral sportswear, but not tied to the club’s name, colours or shirts without its consent; images of the team as a whole belong to the club; for collective products such as sticker albums, the rights of member players are managed by the Italian Footballers’ Association, AIC (Calcio e Finanza, in Italian). Before designing a product you need to know which of these rights you need and who can grant them. Real cases need a lawyer’s opinion.
An Italian example: stickers
The first Panini album came out in Modena for the 1961-1962 season, titled “Calciatori”, with Milan’s Nils Liedholm on the cover (Il Post, in Italian). Every year since, the collection has brought together club and league marks and images of hundreds of players: the textbook case of a sports product that lives on licences.
Which products work
- Fan apparel and accessories, beyond the official shirt.
- Collectibles: stickers, cards, models, commemorative editions.
- Products for the home, school and gifting.
- Food and special packs tied to a season, a trophy, an anniversary.
- Experiences and products tied to places, such as stadiums.
The sports calendar sets the pace: season starts, major tournaments, wins and anniversaries are when products sell most, and also when approvals have to be closed in time.
Where to start
Our sports portfolio includes Calciatori Panini, La Gazzetta dello Sport, San Siro Stadium, Sergio Tacchini, Mascalzone Latino and Wolf Racing. The basics are in how brand licensing works and how to choose a property; for a project, write to us from the licensing service page.
