Panda Global sells jackets through its own team store.Panda Global
Last week, NRG Esports CEO Andy Miller, who is also a co-owner of the Sacramento Kings, took to Twitter to vent about continually finding counterfeit NRG merchandise available for sale on Amazon: “Hey, @amazon this crap pisses me off. All knock offs of every esorts [sic] org out there. Reported time and again and you keep letting these vendors back in. … This looks like a museum of logo evolution of every major esports org. Let a guy make an honest buck!”
Miller was more diplomatic but no less frustrated when speaking about the matter, which affects many esports teams, to Sports Business Journal. “It stings to see posts from fans showing off their love for NRG in their new org gear and knowing they unwittingly bought knockoff merch,” Miller said.
NRG owns the San Francisco Shock in the Overwatch League and OpTic Chicago in the Call of Duty League. Fanatics makes Overwatch League gear and Meta Threads makes gear for NRG as well as a number of other esports teams. Though Miller would not provide specifics on how much of those teams’ revenue came from merchandise, he said in general merch sales can account for anywhere from 5%-30% of an esports organization’s revenue. Organizations felt the sting of lost merchandise sales last year, as a report from Newzoo (a sister company to SBJ as part of Leaders Group) indicated that much of the sale of team apparel takes place at live tournaments, many of which were not held due to the pandemic.
Panda Global CEO Alan Bunney explained that most esports organizations do not sell their merchandise directly on Amazon, but rather through their own custom online storefronts. As a result, while their entrenched fans know where to purchase authentic gear, newer or less-savvy fans can be fooled by knockoffs on the major online retailer.
“The people who fall into the Amazon trap are the softer fans or grandparents buying for Christmas who say ‘My grandson loves 100 Thieves, let me find a 100 Thieves shirt and give it to them,’ and they buy a knockoff because you can’t buy 100 Thieves stuff normally [on Amazon],” he said.
Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting policy says, in part, that sellers are prohibited from selling “any products that are not legal for sale, such as products that have been illegally replicated, reproduced, or manufactured.”
In addition to counterfeit apparel, Panda Global also has had its struggles with Amazon. The company recently launched a custom adapter for the Nintendo Switch gaming console and did so through its PGHardware product line. As with apparel, the company does not sell its hardware through Amazon, and so following the adapter’s launch, resellers began listing the limited-run product on the site at a higher price.
“I agree with Andy,” Bunney said, “and I do wish there were easier ways to deal with it. Our logos have trademarks, the counterfeit stuff does impact us, and it is difficult to measure how much.”
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