In another exclusive announcement, Upper Deck has announced today that they have signed an exclusive deal with Roberto Clemente’s estate giving them the rights to produce Clemente related products. He is expected to appear in at least 6 Upper Deck products in 2010 with his first release being the Upper Deck 2009 Ultimate Collection, which is scheduled for release in December of this year.
Roberto Clemente had an amazing 18-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates where he played in almost 2500 games, batted .317 with 240 HRs. He also won the World Series Championship twice. Even though he played for 18 years his career was cut short when he died in a place crash while attempting to deliver emergency relief packages to Nicaragua following an earthquake.
Upper Deck has the MLBPA rights as well as various agreements with players like Griffey and Jeter, could this exclusive Clemente contract be the first step in picking up the rights to retired and deceased players? That could give them plenty of options to continue producing baseball related products.
With Topps recently announcing that they have become the “Official Trading Card Company of MLB”, Upper Deck has not sat by idle and have made their own announcement about their future in the baseball market. Upper Deck CEO Richard McWilliam today stated, “Looking ahead to 2010, we are 100% committed to building the highest quality and most innovative baseball cards in the industry…”
Additionally Judy Heeter, the Director of Business Affairs and Licensing for the MLBPA, said "We believe strong competition is generally good for consumers, and expect that our ongoing relationships with both Topps and Upper Deck will ensure consumer choices that lead to category growth."
Upper Deck will not back down and the MLBPA is supporting them. I, along with many other collectors, am relieved to hear that Upper Deck is committed to continuing in the baseball market. The MLBPA is absolutely correct by saying that competition is good for the consumers and it is situations like this that bring about brand loyalty. I have said all along that signing exclusive contracts is just good business but in this hobby it could adversely affect the consumer in the end.
By now most of you have heard that beginning January 1, 2010, Topps will be the exclusive card company of MLB. This means that Topps has the exclusive rights to creating baseball cards, stickers and specific other products featuring MLB players, team names and logos. The first exclusive card set to be released by Topps will be the Topps Baseball Series 1 in February 2010.
Just the other day I was talking about Panini having the exclusive rights to NBA licensing and now Topps signs one with MLB. What is next Upper Deck working to sign an exclusive NFL license? I understand that this is just business and some people claim that this will help stimulate the trading card market as well as “cut the confusion” for collectors, but honestly it also isolates a segment of the collecting community and in the end may cause some collectors to either leave the hobby or adjust their purchasing habits.
Fortunately Upper Deck still has the MLBPA license so they can continue to create sets using MLB players, just not team names or logos and Donruss loosing the MLB license a few years back has not stopped them from putting out baseball sets. Hopefully I am wrong and this does not affect the hobby in the end.
