The pandemic had turned TikTok into a booming marketplace for sports memorabilia “breakers,” with thousands of independent sellers building businesses by live streaming the opening of trading cards and collectibles. Now, one of those sellers says he has gone from generating almost $200,000 a month to losing his business, filing for bankruptcy, and also losing his family home. He now alleges that downfall was the result of an anti-competitive scheme orchestrated by some of the biggest names in sports and social media.

David Allan puts the blame on the NFL, Fanatics, TikTok, and parent company ByteDance. In a new federal antitrust lawsuit, the Minnesota-based memorabilia seller alleges the four defendants coordinated to push independent sellers off TikTok’s marketplace unless they agreed to sell Fanatics’ merchandise exclusively.

“The object of the conspiracy was to exclude independent memorabilia sellers from TikTok unless they agreed to sell Fanatics’ merchandise exclusively,” Skalsky wrote in the complaint.

The suit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by Skalsky and his company, QCBRIPNSHIP LLC, which operated the livestream business Quad City Breaks.

These independent sellers go by the name breakers in the hobby world. They go live on TikTok, crack open sealed boxes of sports cards and memorabilia in real time, and the customers who bought into slots watch the whole thing unfold and get whatever pulls out of the pack. According to the complaint, independent breakers built thriving business on TikTok during the pandemic before Fanatics allegedly sought to dominate that rapidly growing market. 

Skalsky claims his business was generating as much as $200,000 a month before repeated account bans beginning in 2024 wrecked it. The complaint gets specific about how that pressure allegedly played out. The lawsuit also alleges Fanatics sought to dominate the livestream memorabilia market by leveraging its licensing relationship with the NFL while TikTok removed or demoted sellers who refused to enter exclusive agreements.

According to the filing, Steve Halupka, identified as TikTok Shop’s US Sports Collectibles Team Lead, texted Skalsky that his account would be reinstated if he signed an exclusive contract with Fanatics. A separate individual identified as Ceruti allegedly told Skalsky he would coordinate with Halupka at TikTok to get the account restored once that deal was signed.

Skalsky argues the underlying premise, that Fanatics is the only lawful seller of this merchandise, doesn’t hold up. The First Sale Doctrine allows anyone who buys a genuine item legally to resell it, trademark and all, without needing permission from the brand.

There’s a financial relationship at the center of this that the lawsuit leans on heavily too. The NFL holds a substantial equity stake in Fanatics and was reportedly the single largest investor in a $1.5 billion funding round the company raised in 2022. That dual role, licensor on one hand, financial stakeholder on the other, is exactly what Skalsky’s complaint says creates the incentive for the alleged scheme in the first place.

Skalsky’s argument goes beyond what happened to his own business too. He says the whole market got hurt when independent sellers were pushed out.

“Defendants’ conduct harmed not only plaintiff but the competitive process itself by eliminating independent sellers from the livestream memorabilia marketplace, reducing consumer choice, suppressing output of competing products, increasing barriers to entry, restricting alternative channels of distribution and concentrating market power in Fanatics-controlled entities,” Skalsky wrote.

Jeremy C. Shafer of Banner Legal represents Skalsky and is seeking financial damages, restoration of his TikTok account, restoration of its previous algorithmic standing, cancellation of the disputed exclusive arrangements, and a court order blocking the alleged practices going forward.

Now, according to IP and corporate attorney Ariel Givner, the lawsuit also highlights the fight over control of the lucrative sports collectibles market on social media. The representatives for TikTok, the NFL, and Fanatics did not respond to requests for comment regarding the lawsuit.

On Tuesday, Giver said she had uncovered another lawsuit raising nearly identical allegations against the same defendants after reviewing the filings. 

“After seeing how aggressive the allegations were in the other lawsuit against TikTok, Fanatics, and the NFL… I dug deeper and found ANOTHER COMPLAINT that was filed before it,” she wrote on X.

This is not the first time these three defendants have faced these same accusations. Ohio-based GFC & Supply Inc., which operates BigPapa Breaks, filed a nearly identical antitrust suit against the same companies back in October 2025. They alleged the same core conspiracy to monopolise the breaker market.

“The suit claims they banned established breakers with zero warning,” reported Givner. “Sent them cease-and-desist letters on official NFL letterhead, deliberately reset their TikTok algorithms (erasing years of followers and visibility), redirected those customers to Fanatics, and only offered the accounts back if the sellers agreed to buy exclusively from Fanatics and hand over a cut of every sale.”

That earlier case is part of a much bigger legal picture surrounding Fanatics right now, one that’s produced mixed results for the company so far.

Fanatics Has Faced Growing Legal Pressure Over Its Market Position in Sports Collectibles

Fanatics has been in this position before, with outcomes that have gone both ways. Panini sued the company, arguing its exclusive licensing agreements locked competitors out of the trading card business, and a judge let the core antitrust claims move forward as recently as March 2025. Separate class actions, filed under Scaturo & Jones v. Fanatics, have accused the company alongside the NFL, NBA, and MLB of conspiring to monopolize the broader collectibles market.

Fanatics and the NFL haven’t lost every round, though. A federal judge dismissed a different antitrust case against both companies over merchandise restrictions in July 2025, following a similar dismissal the year before in a related MLB case, evidence that this legal terrain remains genuinely contested rather than settled in either direction.

The stakes keep growing regardless of how individual cases land. The collectibles market has only gotten bigger since the pandemic, when TikTok’s livestream breaking scene first exploded and never really slowed down, meaning more money is riding on who controls that channel with each case that gets filed. Sellers across the hobby are watching Skalsky’s case as something bigger than one man’s dispute, with the earlier GFC & Supply lawsuit still working its way through the same court likely to shape how this one unfolds next.