Michael Rubin (businessman)

Michael Gary Rubin (born July 21, 1972) is an American businessman.

He is the founder and CEO of Fanatics, a global digital sports platform that consists of several businesses, including licensed sports merchandise, trading cards and collectibles, sports betting and iGaming, special events, and live commerce.

He is also a board member of Rue Gilt Groupe, which includes RueLaLa.com, Gilt.com, and ShopPremiumOutlets.com.

Michael Gary Rubin was born on July 21, 1972, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Paulette and Ken Rubin.

His mother was a psychiatrist and his father was a veterinarian.

He was raised in a Jewish family.

He grew up in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, where he started a ski-tuning shop in his parents' basement when he was 12 and two years later, using $2,500 in bar mitzvah gifts as seed capital and a lease signed by his father, he opened a formal ski shop in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, named Mike's Ski and Sport.

By the age of 16, he was some $120,000 in debt and was able to settle with his creditors using a $37,000 loan from his father under the condition he attend college.

Rubin agreed, continuing to operate the business, which grew to five ski shops before he entered college.

He attended Villanova University for a semester before dropping out after realizing a large gain on an opportunistic transaction.

This involved buying $200,000 in overstock equipment at a deep discount with $17,000 borrowed from a friend and re-selling it for $75,000.

Using the proceeds from his serendipitous overstock transaction and after selling his ski shops, he went on to found the athletic equipment closeout company KPR sports—named after his parents' initials—which bought and sold over-stock name brand merchandise.

In 1993, the year Rubin turned 21, KPR reached $1 million in annual sales; by 1995, KPR reached $50 million in sales.

In 1995, Rubin purchased 40% of the women's athletic shoe manufacturer Rykä.

He previously founded GSI Commerce in 1998, selling it to eBay in 2011 for $2.4 billion.

In 1998, Rubin created an apparel and logistics company, Global Sports Incorporated, which would later turn into GSI Commerce, a multibillion-dollar e-commerce company.

Rubin was a partner of the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team from 2011 and the New Jersey Devils hockey team from 2013 before selling his stakes in Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, the holding company of both, in June 2022 to focus on the expansion of Fanatics.

At 38, in 2011, Rubin sold GSI to eBay for $2.4 billion reaping a $150 million windfall.

As eBay just wanted the order fulfillment business for large retailers so it could better compete with Amazon.com, Rubin was able to buy back the consumer businesses of GSI at a fire sale price.

He repurchased: Fanatics, Inc., a licensed sports merchandiser; Rue La La, a flash seller, and ShopRunner, a retail benefits program.

Rubin serves as CEO of Fanatics and as executive chairman on Rue La La's board.

In October 2011, Rubin bought a minority share in the Philadelphia 76ers.

Rubin was a member of the investment group that won a $280 million bid for the team led by Josh Harris and David Blitzer.

Other notable members include Art Wrubel, Jason Levien, Adam Aron, Martin J. Geller, David B. Heller, James Lassiter, Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Erick Thohir.

The NBA formally approved the deal on October 13, 2011.

He is also the co-chair of the REFORM Alliance, a criminal justice reform organization that he launched in January 2019, together with Jay-Z, Meek Mill, Robert Kraft, and Daniel S. Loeb, among others.

Rubin has been included in the Forbes 400: The Richest People in America, the Forbes: The World's Billionaires list, and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

His wealth, as of February 2024, was valued at $11.5 billion.

In 2019, it was announced on CNBC that Simon Property Group would team up with Rubin to take their mall inventory online and contribute $280 million to the venture.

In December 2020, ShopRunner was sold to FedEx.

Rubin has orchestrated partnership deals for Fanatics with more than 900 professional and collegiate leagues, sports and teams, including deals with Nike, the National Football League and Major League Baseball that grant Fanatics the rights to manufacture and distribute all Nike fan gear for both leagues.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, Rubin shut down a Fanatics' MLB uniform manufacturing plant to generate hospital gowns and PPE for frontline workers.

In August 2020, he secured $350 million Series E funding for Fanatics that raised the valuation of the company to $6.2 billion.

In March 2021, Rubin and Fanatics secured a $320 million funding round, followed by another $325 million in August 2021 that brought the company's valuation to $18 billion as of September 2021.

During the latter funding round, it was announced that Rubin would transition to the role of CEO of Fanatics Holdings Inc., a broader Fanatics portfolio that would expand beyond merchandising into new sports verticals in order to create a global digital sports platform.

It was reported at the time that these verticals may include NFTs, a space Rubin entered in May 2021 by co-founding digital collectibles company Candy Digital; sports betting and gaming; trading cards, ticketing and media.

In January 2023, Fanatics divested its 60% stake in Candy Digital.

Fanatics raised another $350 million in September 2021, one month after its expansion into the trading cards business by acquiring the licensing rights for Major League Baseball and National Football League.

In March 2022, Rubin and Fanatics raised $1.5 billion followed by another $700 million in December 2022, reportedly pushing the company's valuation to $31 billion.

During the December round, Rubin announced Fanatics would be expanding into a third vertical in 2023, Fanatics Betting & Gaming.