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Discussed in this edition of Sporting Crypto:

In July 2026, collectors traded $10.9m of digital Panini cards.

It is the third biggest trading month in the platform's history.

I last wrote about Panini in March 2026, when they opened a bridge to Ethereum and named OpenSea their exclusive marketplace. Trading that month was $2.04m.

Five months later, the volumes have increased more than 5-fold.

Panini Blockchain launched in January 2020.

It runs on Panini's own chain, as a closed loop. You buy digital packs, open them, and trade the cards on Panini's own marketplace. There are challenges to play and a crafting mechanic where you burn cards to earn points. Same licensed IP as the physical business, sold digitally as NFTs. (Though as I said, they did open a bridge so collectors can also trade these assets on OpenSea, so it isn’t totally closed loop anymore).

Two numbers matter here.

All time, the platform has accumulated $203.3m in volume including primary, and $128.0m without it. So roughly 37% of everything that has ever happened here was Panini selling product.

Pack sales hit $3.35m in June 2026, the biggest primary month in the platform's history. Panini dropped their Prizm FIFA World Cup 2026 packs on 19 June 2026, first off the line at $150, with hobby packs five days later at $25.

Primary sales reached $3.13m in January 2026 with no tournament at all, so big pack months are not unique to this.

September 2025 is still the biggest trading month on the secondary markets with $14.16m in volume. June 2026, the World Cup 2026 month, comes second at $13.28m and July 2026 third at $10.92m (so far).

The NFT bubble pushed trading to $10.9m in 2022. It cooled with everything else after that, down to $6.3m in 2023 and $7.2m in 2024.

Then the collector boom arrived. Trading reached $54.2m in 2025, and 2026 has already passed $41.1m in seven months.

September 2025 processed 338,905 trades. July 2026 processed 128,542, which is 38% of the activity for 77% of volume.

The average sale price went from $31.69 in March 2026 to $84.95 in July 2026.

The curious thing about the data is that it is largely the same number of market participants.

July 2026 had 2,211 unique buyers. September 2025 had 2,735. June 2026, the second biggest trading month ever, had 2,739.

Sellers have outnumbered buyers roughly two to one all year. There were 4,360 of them in July 2026.

When I wrote about Panini crossing $5m a month in March 2025, I finished on this:

The volumes and average sale per item have increased, but the audience has not done so substantially.

Panini take a cut of all of this on the secondary market. Their terms and conditions charge the seller 5% on marketplace sales up to $50,000, and 2.5% above that, so at an average sale of $84.95 almost everything sits in the 5% band.

Which means July 2026's trading earned them somewhere around $546,000. September 2025, the bigger month, was closer to $708,000.

Across 2026 so far the marketplace has produced roughly $2.05m in fees. In the whole of 2024 it produced about $359,000.

Deciphering exactly how much net revenue is made in the collectibles space these days is pretty difficult. But we’ve had a go.

(Reminder: fees are Panini taking a slice of someone else's trade on the marketplace. The pack sales are their own primary revenue)

Pack sales have brought in $8.97m across 2026, on top of the $2.05m in marketplace fees. Call it $11m this year.

Which makes 2022 the biggest year this platform has ever had on revenue, at roughly $21.5m. Almost all of it was pack sales during the NFT bubble.

Since then, estimated revenues are likely down, but trading now carries a real share of the total revenue, and the marketplace fees have gone from $359,000 in 2024 to $2.05m in seven months of 2026.

Panini's card business has historically turned over $1bn to $1.2bn a year.

So this feels like a drop in the water, but I think beyond the numbers there is some tea leaf reading to do.

(1) Panini's NFT marketplace is a real business now

Roughly $11m of revenue in seven months of 2026, between pack sales and marketplace fees, in a depressed NFT market. That’s pretty impressive from a heritage brand like Panini.

(2) But their recent volumes are driven by big licences like FIFA

September 2025, June 2026 and July 2026 are the three biggest trading months in the platform's history. June and July were World Cup months, so there is a throughline to big IP being available for purchase.

(3) And… they are losing those licences

The NBA went in October 2025, the NFL in March 2026, and UEFA back in 2022. The World Cup follows after 2030. That doesn’t leave much left.

(4) But perhaps licensing isn't the only way

Look at Courtyard, Collector Crypt and Beezie. They buy licensed cards someone else already printed, vault them, and resell them as digital packs. Courtyard alone has passed $1bn in marketplace volume. Indeed, competitor Fanatics partnered with Phygitals earlier this year. In a world where licenses are scarce, the collectibles market has gotten creative. I wonder if Panini would ever consider going in this direction. Digital repacking, gacha and guaranteed revenues on a secondary market are revenue lines they will explore in my opinion, or they will simply have a much smaller business in the future.

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