Michael Rubin drops details about Fanatics Fest 2026 🍿 | First Take

Doing great. By the way, you got the pitch down pretty perfect. I mean, we need you repping this every day, 24/7.

Yeah, look, this is only the third year of doing it, and I looked through the content schedule a couple weeks ago, and nothing ever surprises me, it's amazing. I was like, the content is absolutely insane. From hosting the World Cup press conference you just talked about, where you're going to have the two teams that are in the finals with their captains there. So, if this were a repeat of 2022, you'd have Messi and Mbappé at Fanatics Fest in front of tens of thousands of fans. You've got so many incredible Knicks moments. You've got the starting five that are going to be there. I think we're about to announce that, so I guess I just announced it here. You've got, um, you know, I think 20 or 30 guys from both current and past Knicks. Um, I just saw that Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart are doing a podcast with Aaron Judge. You've got biggest stars, about 400 of the biggest athletes, celebrities, artists all to give, you know, these, I think probably close to 200,000 fans that once-in-a-lifetime experiences over these four days.

Well, I always love the Fanatics games, watching 50 of the best athletes, artists, celebrities competing against 50 average Joe fans last year. By the way, $2 million of prizes, million dollar first prize, half a million dollar Ferrari second prize, quarter million dollar trading card as the third prize last year. You had six of the top 10 finalists were actually average Joe fans. School teacher from Pennsylvania, a gym teacher, got third prize, beat out James Harden by a hair. James is still a little bit salty about that. So, yeah, I love it, but of course Brady won first prize and our UFC champion from a couple weeks ago got second prize. But then I mean I'm super excited about that. The thing I'm probably most excited about is the smiles you see on fans' faces. I remember last year seeing a guy who grabbed me in his 90s. He's like, 'I'm here with my son, my grandson, and my great-grandson. These are the best experiences of my life. Thank you for putting this on.' We love doing that. So, that's probably the thing that I get most excited about.

Yeah, so we want every fan coming in completely dressed to impress. Whether you're your favorite player, whether you just have incredible creativity as a super fan. We put out a crazy best dressed fan gets like sports tickets to everything in the world from the Super Bowl VIP to big WWE match to UFC to all of your local teams. And by the way, if you win this year, you get a chance to be one of the 50 fans at Fanatics Games next year as well. So, you got to come dressed. Last year it was someone who dressed up as Saquon Barkley jumping over another player. The year before it was someone in the Bills Mafia. And both costumes, they were insane. So, we want everyone to come and dress to impress, crazy sports fan show who they are. That's what Fanatics Fest is all about, showing your fandom.

Yeah, it's an amazing question. So, the way I would answer that is by looking at their schedules. And I'm actually a micromanager here. So, I look at the top 100 athletes, celebrities, artists. What are they doing every day at Fanatics Fest? And like, my idea is always how do we break them? I always joke with Brady about this. Like, we're going to break you at Fanatics Fest. You know, he's got a 4-day schedule. He's just going open to close. But I'll tell you, like I look at Novak Djokovic's schedule. Like, he's coming in doing a lot with fans this year. This is his first time coming. LeBron's doing so much more this year than he did last year. So, the thing that I love most is when you see the biggest stars in the world say, I want to do more because I want to connect with my fans. And I'll tell you, there are so many. And by the way, I'll tell you a lot of the New York Knicks. I looked at like Brunson's schedule. Some of these guys are coming in, Cat's schedule. They're coming in and they want it. This is the right time to connect with the fans. You don't want to do that when you're playing your sport. When you're playing a game, you're locked in on the game. Here, it's about how do you connect with the partners that are most important to you, the fans that are most important to you. So, I'd say the biggest maybe surprise to me is how many athletes come into this and then after the first year, they want to do more because it's so great for them to connect with their fans. They love doing it. And like, you know, I think we all understand. We're here because of these, you know, couple billion incredible fans. We wouldn't have jobs without them. And so, I think people, this is the time they can really give back and do something great for their fans.

Can't wait to host you. And we keep recruiting Stephen A. We're going to get him in the games one of these years, too. He's, you know, he's looking more athletic than ever. One of these days he's going to be one of our, you know, he's going to be one of our 100 in the Fanatics games and he could take home that big first prize.

And we're holding you to that.