TikTok and Fanatics face antitrust claims over sports card bans

Three sports memorabilia sellers have filed lawsuits alleging that TikTok removed their accounts for trademark and gambling violations, then directed them toward Fanatics as the path to reinstatement. Two of the three signed with Fanatics. Both remained banned.

MVP Breaks was generating roughly $475,000 a month selling autographed NFL helmets and similar collectibles through TikTok Shop before August 2025. The other plaintiffs ran comparable operations. All three say the same sequence played out: account suspended, Fanatics presented as the solution, reinstatement withheld after signing.

If the facts hold, this is a referral arrangement with teeth — the referral only works if the platform controls who gets to sell. The antitrust question is whether TikTok used its gating power over a commercial marketplace to deliver competitors to a preferred partner. That is not a novel theory. What is novel is the factual architecture: the plaintiffs allege they were given the name of a specific company as the condition of access, then denied access anyway. The second part matters as much as the first, because it removes the most obvious defense. If signing with Fanatics had actually restored their accounts, TikTok and Fanatics could argue the arrangement was a legitimate vetting process. With two of three plaintiffs still banned after signing, that argument becomes harder to make with a straight face.

Fanatics operates in the same collectibles space these sellers occupied. A platform arrangement that systematically removes independent sellers while routing them toward a single incumbent looks, in contract terms, like an exclusive dealing arrangement — and exclusive dealing is not inherently unlawful, but it requires a procompetitive justification that survives scrutiny. "Trademark compliance" is a legitimate justification until the accounts stay suspended after compliance is demonstrated.

The trademark and gambling strike designations are the mechanism worth watching. Both are broad enough to apply to a wide range of memorabilia commerce, and neither requires the platform to specify what, precisely, triggered the removal. That ambiguity is useful for a platform that wants discretion. It is also the kind of ambiguity that antitrust plaintiffs tend to fill with discovery.

I have seen referral-to-partner arrangements defended successfully at the motion-to-dismiss stage because the plaintiff could not allege, with specificity, that the referral was the actual reason for the ban rather than a coincidence with a legitimate compliance action. These plaintiffs have an answer to that problem: they allege they complied and were still banned. That specificity does not guarantee survival past pleading, but it closes the gap that usually ends these cases early.