Hobby Musings: Will Fournier, Upper Deck World of Sports Volume 1 – Interview
Hobby Musings: Will Fournier, Upper Deck World of Sports Volume 1 – Interview Transcript
Editor’s note: Some text has been changed from original audio for grammar and clarity.
KS: Hi everyone. Welcome to another edition of Hobby Musings. I’m Kelsey Schroyer, joined today by Upper Deck’s Will Fournier. Will thanks for being here.
WF: Thanks so much for having me.
KS: So, we’re talking World of Sports. This is a product that Upper Deck had a number of years ago and is bringing back. Why did the company decide to bring it back after such a long hiatus?
WF: It’s a great question. So, the last time we had World of Sport was a little bit before my time. That was in around 2010. But the reason we’re bringing back World of Sport is we’re just really excited about the opportunities we see in the collegiate space. College football is the second most popular sport in the country by viewership after the NFL. And at Upper Deck we have a strong legacy of creating football, basketball and baseball cards. And World of Sport really is an opportunity for us to get into the NIL space and, just show we can do.
KS: I know you said the previous product was before your time, but knowing what you do about it, how do you think the newest addition kind of comparison, contrast to the original?
WF: I would say that this version of World of Sport is more of a prospector set where it’s we’re featuring more of those young up and coming stars rather than established stars in their collegiate year or otherwise. We’re excited to feature a really diverse checklist of student athletes in this set. We’re featuring athletes from football, basketball, volleyball, lacrosse, wrestling, just name any college sport where you can think of, we’ve probably got a card for them. We’re really excited to bring more of a focus on those Olympic sports. Think track and field, your wrestling, your gymnastics.
We’re trying to really create cards for those student athletes that we feel are underrepresented in the market. This is a good opportunity for collectors to have the first trading card for athletes that we think are going to be stars in their respective fields.
KS: So, you’re talking about the prospect nature of the product, given that it is so prospect driven as compared to the previous one, which includes some more established athletes, what were some of the challenges in bringing this back?
WF: I would say just the NIL landscape is ever changing, right? We just had a huge house settlement where now the colleges are able to salary the student athletes. I think that the challenges with an NIL based product, a lot of it is just like the regulations in the space are changing so often where, one week it’s plan A, next week it’s plan B, the third week is plan C, so definitely, we’ve been working on this product for a few years trying to make it the best product we can.
But it’s just, NIL products are tough just with the regulatory agencies. And now with the new salary rules, we’ve really had to make sure that we’re doing the product right and that we’re following the proper guidelines as set by the schools and working in collaboration with the universities and the student athletes and their agencies has been a challenge but it’s something that I think we’ve learned a lot as a company, and I think it’s something we’re going to learn and we’re going to use going forward.
KS: Now you’re advertising this as a one autograph per box product as the, as part of the chase. Who are some of the top signers in the set?
WF: So, yeah, it’s a great question. Something that we’re really excited for this autograph set is that we’re featuring a large percentage of student female athletes. And as you’ve seen, with the growth of the WNBA or with our licensor in the PWHL, there’s a really exciting movement in the hobby right now. In the future, we want women collectors want to be involved, and we want more female athletes featured. And that’s something we’re really excited to bring to this product. Some of our top designers in this product are our female student athletes. So that’s anyone from the likes of Sarah Strong on UConn women’s basketball to Lexi Missimo, who’s a really, really good, Texas women’s soccer player.
We also have some more established stars like James Hagens on Boston College. Look for his cards in this product. That’ll be his first autograph card in the market. We also have, from the world of field hockey, we got Riley Heck, she’s a really, really multiple time, like, best women’s field hockey player in the country. And then some of your more established stars like Jeremy Roach on Baylor, or Reese Atwood on Texas.
We’re really trying to show you guys are really diverse, autograph checklists with a variety of sports and student athletes. And something we’re really excited is the large percentage of female student athletes we’re showing in that checklist.
KS: Aside from the autographs, what are some of the other highlights in the product?
WF: Yeah, I can actually show some off right here. So we’re really excited to have a high level of case hit inserts. And we know that collectors have come to love those case hit inserts. And what we’ve realized is that people kind of need to know, like this is the card you want to chase. So, I’ve got a couple of them right here I want to show off to you.
So, this is one of our case hits, it’s called sizzle. It’s actually printed with a really cool foil board. I don’t know if it’s going to show off great on camera.
KS: I can see it’s pretty cool.
WF: Yeah. This is less than one per case. This is a really tough pull and it’s featuring your top student athletes. It’s going to be your marquee names and your marquee stars. And we think this is a really interesting design; it’s printed with one of our technologies. And this is a really neat card. And then also here’s another one for you. It’s called World of Ballers. This is one in every few cases, this is a super tough pull. You can kind of see that foil board in the background there. This is the, this is the rarest insert in the product that we’ve advertised.
Obviously, we’ve got some Easter eggs that I can’t tell you about, but yeah. Be on the lookout for some really cool case hit inserts. And then in addition to the autos, I should have showed you these earlier when we were talking a little bit more about the autos. But we’ve got a variety of insert autos. So, this is Lexi Missimo. She’s one of the top women’s soccer players in the country. We think she’s going to be a mainstay in the US Women’s National Team for years to come. And, you know, subjects like Lexi or like a Reese Atwood, who is, one of the stars of Texas softball National Championship that they just won.
We want collectors to have the opportunity for these to be the first cards that they’re going to see of these student athletes in the market. So, where some, you know what’s the best way to put this where some, you might be like, hey, who’s this person or who’s this athlete?
The real thing is, we encourage collectors do a little research to see what they are. There’s a reason we put them in this set. There’s a reason we put them on the checklist. And I think that, if you’re not the biggest volleyball collector, we have Madisen Skinner in this product who one of the best volleyball players in the country. I think that collectors are going to learn a lot about these sports that they may not have a lot of, knowledge of, but what we’ve learned is, if you look at, for example, Nebraska women’s volleyball. They were selling out the football stadium, there’s huge markets for these secondary sports that maybe don’t have the largest collector base right now.
But we think that going forward, we’ve seen the demand, we’ve seen the demand for a more diverse student athlete checklist. And we want to try to be some of the first cards on the market for these student athletes.
KS: Now with that in mind, is this a product that’s kind of going to be a one off, or is it something Upper Deck intends to release in future years as well?
WF: Yeah. So, as we had World of Sports before, we’re calling this one World of Sports Volume One. So, it’s a bit of a rebrand, a real bit of a refresh for the product. And we’re going to have this; our plan is to have this as an annual release. So yeah, be on the lookout for World of Sports Volume One’s hitting the shelves the 18th of June. And it’s going to be also available on Upper Deck’s store for the blasters and then also available at Target as well.
So, be on look out for a World of Sport Volume One at your local LCS. As well as at some of our retail partners.
KS: That’s awesome. I can’t wait to see some of these cards out in the wild. Thank you so much for joining us today.
WF: I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.
Hobby Musings: Will Fournier, Upper Deck World of Sports Volume 1
Kelsey’s ability to bring hobby coverage to the mainstream sports fan has been a true asset. GTS is happy to feature his thoughts on collecting in Hobby Musings. The opinions expressed are his and do not necessarily reflect those of GTS Distribution.
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