The record-breaking group licensing hauls by Shedeur Sanders and his former college teammate Travis Hunter weren’t the only eye-popping figures nestled in the NFLPA’s annual report filed last week with the Department of Labor.
Player revenue from trading cards exploded last NFL season, hitting $93.1 million for the period ended February 28, 2026, up from $39.6 million in fiscal year 2025, a 135% increase. The 2025 figure was already a 35% jump from the season prior.
It’s no secret that the trading card business has surged since the pandemic, but just how much is revealed from a Front Office Sports analysis of the past ten years of NFLPA annual reports, known in labor circles as an LM-2.
From 2016 until 2025, the NFLPA’s commercial arm averaged nearly $29 million in annual royalties and marketing fees from its trading card partners. The vast majority of that income came from Panini, which in April was replaced by Fanatics as the licensee for cards, meaning last NFL season was the final full season with Panini as the partner.
Until recently, the bulk of the income came from video games and jerseys. In the 2019 LM-2, for example, the NFLPA reported $56.8 million in revenue from Electronic Arts for video games, more than $30 million from Fanatics for jerseys, and $30 million from Panini for trading cards.
