Phillies set a record for selling most championship series merch in 24 hours

The Phillies’ National League championship provoked a record rush of next-day team-gear sales, as fans swarmed MLBShop.com and other online portals to snap up locker-room shirts, World Series patch hats, and other swag.

The Phillies set a 24-hour sales record for a league-championship series winner, breaking the previous record that had stood since the Chicago Cubs won the National League in 2016 and unleashed pent-up demand from that World Series-deprived city, according to the MLB and Fanatics, the team-sports gear sales and manufacturing firm controlled by Main Line billionaire Michael Rubin.

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“Philadelphia has some of the most passionate fans in all of sports, and their response to the National League Championship Series clinch on Sunday following this improbable playoff run has been remarkable,” with “record-breaking sales” to mark their first World Series trip in 13 years, said Jack Boyle, a senior Fanatics executive.

Top-selling items logged by Fanatics for that day-and-night period include Fanatics’ own Phillies men’s “locker room championship shirts” like the ones the Phils put on Sunday night after beating the Padres in Game 5 to clinch the series. Other items were the matching hats made by Buffalo, N.Y.-based New Era Cap Co.; the women’s version of the locker room shirt; New Era’s World Series Patch hat; and a pullover Phillies hoodie made by Fanatics under a Nike contract.

The privately held company declined to say how many items it has sold but added that Phils fans set records for both the volume and the value of merchandise acquired within that first 24 hours of a league championship.

Fanatics, which is based in Jacksonville, Fla., and has offices in Conshohocken, has merchandising deals with Major League Baseball, the NFL, NBA, NCAA, and other team sports groups.

It also makes Major League baseball uniforms used by more than 2,000 pros, under a deal with the league and Nike.

Rubin in 2017 purchased the unionized Majestic Athletic plant in Palmer Township, near Easton, Pa., which at the time employed 600. That met a call by Major League Baseball players and their union, who had pressed owners to ensure shirts would continue to be made in the U.S.A. even if the league changed uniform brands.

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In 2019 the league awarded a uniform contract to Nike, which paid a reported $1 billion to add its trademark “swoosh” to team uniforms. Nike, like its predecessor Under Armour, contracted with Majestic to make pro uniforms.

Since buying Majestic, Rubin has beefed up the privately held company’s U.S. manufacturing capacity with a series of factory and brand purchases, while also branching out into online sports gambling and other sports-related businesses.

While some items sold to pro baseball fans are made at Majestic, most fan gear is made at other Fanatics plants, or under third-party contracts with other manufacturers such as New Era.

Majestic’s Palmer Townships plant, which ran round the clock sewing new uniforms as an unusual number of teams and free-agent team-switchers ordered new game duds last spring, is again working extra hours to get merchandise out the door to Phillies fans, according to the company.

Combined Phillies and Astro post-clinch sales also outpaced the previous record-holder for 24-hours-after-the-championship sales, eclipsing the Chicago-Cleveland championships in 2016.