Euro 2024 sticker album: Why Birmingham’s Jordan James is in, but Kylian Mbappe is not
Imagine a European Championship without Kylian Mbappe, the world’s biggest football star.
Imagine it without Premier League player of the year Phil Foden, Germany legends Manuel Neuer and Toni Kroos, or the kit or badge of the defending champions Italy.
For a group of football fans that tournament is already a reality — at least in the world of sticker albums, where a business battle between the sector’s two biggest companies has moved onto the Euro 2024 stage.
Panini, the Italian company that had produced the official Euros album for every tournament since West Germany won in Italy in 1980, lost the rights for Euro 2024 and 2028 to Topps, owned by U.S-based Fanatics.
Topps’ immediate issue was that, despite winning the rights from UEFA, the governing body of European football and organisers of the Euros, it does not have image rights to four of the event’s most prestigious national teams.
Panini still holds deals with the English Football Association and the football federations of Germany, France and Italy, meaning Topps is forbidden from using those nations’ official badges or kits.
It also means Topps had to race to strike individual image rights deals with players from those nations before completing its first Euros album.
Some players signed up, so Topps was able to include England stars including captain Harry Kane and midfielder Jude Bellingham, but others including Foden, Manchester City team-mate John Stones and Germany star Jamal Musiala declined to sign up and are missing.
A Topps spokesperson told The Athletic: “While we are disappointed that a small number of players are missing, this is due to the tournament’s former sticker partner having blocked certain parts of the collection, to the detriment of the fans.
“Unlike the former sticker partner, we are committed to the fans and believe the offering of stickers and cards — and range of current and former players — will get everyone excited for the tournament.”
The episode has brought a battle to a European stage that was already intensifying in the United States. Among those who have jumped from Panini to Fanatics are the NFL Players Association and wrestling company WWE, while the Italian firm scored a major win by extending its deal with FIFA, football’s world governing body, for World Cup rights until 2030.
Panini has filed a suit under antitrust laws over Fanatics’ entry into the market but Fanatics has countersued, saying Panini’s case is “not only legally baseless, but also hypocritical”.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the refusal of some star players to sign over their image rights to Topps led to some unexpected appearances.
On the England pages, AC Milan’s Fikayo Tomori, Manchester City’s Rico Lewis and Manchester United’s Mason Mount are all players who failed to make Gareth Southgate’s squad — and had looked like long shots for a while — but have made it into the England team in the official Euro 2024 sticker book.
It is the presence of Luke Thomas, the Leicester City left-back who spent last season on loan at Sheffield United and Middlesbrough, that has raised most eyebrows though. Thomas was a regular for England Under-21s between 2021 and 2023 but has rarely, if ever, been mentioned as a contender for the senior side.
With England short of left-backs, and with Luke Shaw and Ben Chilwell among the players not to agree to rights deals with Topps, the company was forced to look a long way down the England pecking order to find an option.
“It was a surprise when I opened a pack and got Luke Thomas,” says Mike Lawrence, a West Bromwich Albion supporter from Solihull and a regular collector. “I genuinely didn’t know who he was.
“I put it in a WhatsApp group of my football mates, ‘Why is this?’. So when I got him I looked into it and realised that some other players would be missing.”
As well as the absence of some big names, generic flags (the alternative Topps opted for when emblems were not available) are mixed with official badges, leaving fans feeling short-changed.
“UEFA ran a fair and competitive tender process for the rights to the official UEFA EURO 2024 sticker album, which was awarded to Topps,” UEFA told The Athleticin a statement. “However, please be informed that official licensed products that include National Association IP (intellectual property) and individual player IP require a wide number of individual contractual agreements.
“These are sometimes not possible due to existing, exclusive agreements being in place with other competing parties, which is why, if you look back in the history of major football tournament sticker albums, there are often some players or IP relating to national associations missing in the official albums.”
Lawrence says players have been missing from previous albums but the issue seems more acute in 2024. “I have collected the sticker albums in the past and I’ve done some Premier League ones in the past,” he says. “I think it has happened before, but it’s been more obvious in this edition.
“When I looked back at the England page for the France 2016 sticker album, there were six or seven players who didn’t make the squad but they were players who might well have been in the squad but just didn’t quite get in, so it was nowhere near as obvious as this.
“There were players like Leighton Baines, Phil Jones, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck — England players but people who didn’t quite make the squad.”
The problems for Topps went beyond just the absence of some players.
With qualifying play-offs for the tournament continuing into late March, the stickers and albums had to be printed before the final 24-team line-up was finalised. So the album features quarter-page sections for each team to reach the play-offs. That means nations including Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Luxembourg, who fell at the final qualifying hurdle, are in the album despite not making it.
That means that there is a sticker of Birmingham City’s teenage academy graduate Jordan James, who plays for Wales, but not of Real Madrid’s big summer signing Mbappe.
Topps is confident the issues will not be repeated when it takes over the Premier League’s official sticker album from 2025 in a deal announced earlier this year. Premier League clubs enter into collective commercial agreements, so acquiring image rights will not be a problem.
And with four years to iron out problems before the next European Championships, there is optimism that a similar issue can be avoided on the international stage in future, too.
“UEFA remains committed to having the most authentic licensed products for fans possible and will continue to encourage open dialogue amongst the respective IP holders in relation to future competitions with an objective of achieving this,” the governing body said.
Either way, Lawrence doesn’t seem to mind too much: “I’ve still enjoyed doing it. With the other nations, I haven’t really noticed it because I don’t know their squads as well.”
Euro 2024 sticker album: Why Birmingham’s Jordan James is in, but Kylian Mbappe is not
Imagine a European Championship without Kylian Mbappe, the world’s biggest football star.
Imagine it without Premier League player of the year Phil Foden, Germany legends Manuel Neuer and Toni Kroos, or the kit or badge of the defending champions Italy.
For a group of football fans that tournament is already a reality — at least in the world of sticker albums, where a business battle between the sector’s two biggest companies has moved onto the Euro 2024 stage.
Panini, the Italian company that had produced the official Euros album for every tournament since West Germany won in Italy in 1980, lost the rights for Euro 2024 and 2028 to Topps, owned by U.S-based Fanatics.
Topps’ immediate issue was that, despite winning the rights from UEFA, the governing body of European football and organisers of the Euros, it does not have image rights to four of the event’s most prestigious national teams.
Panini still holds deals with the English Football Association and the football federations of Germany, France and Italy, meaning Topps is forbidden from using those nations’ official badges or kits.
It also means Topps had to race to strike individual image rights deals with players from those nations before completing its first Euros album.
Some players signed up, so Topps was able to include England stars including captain Harry Kane and midfielder Jude Bellingham, but others including Foden, Manchester City team-mate John Stones and Germany star Jamal Musiala declined to sign up and are missing.
A Topps spokesperson told The Athletic: “While we are disappointed that a small number of players are missing, this is due to the tournament’s former sticker partner having blocked certain parts of the collection, to the detriment of the fans.
“Unlike the former sticker partner, we are committed to the fans and believe the offering of stickers and cards — and range of current and former players — will get everyone excited for the tournament.”
The episode has brought a battle to a European stage that was already intensifying in the United States. Among those who have jumped from Panini to Fanatics are the NFL Players Association and wrestling company WWE, while the Italian firm scored a major win by extending its deal with FIFA, football’s world governing body, for World Cup rights until 2030.
Panini has filed a suit under antitrust laws over Fanatics’ entry into the market but Fanatics has countersued, saying Panini’s case is “not only legally baseless, but also hypocritical”.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the refusal of some star players to sign over their image rights to Topps led to some unexpected appearances.
On the England pages, AC Milan’s Fikayo Tomori, Manchester City’s Rico Lewis and Manchester United’s Mason Mount are all players who failed to make Gareth Southgate’s squad — and had looked like long shots for a while — but have made it into the England team in the official Euro 2024 sticker book.
It is the presence of Luke Thomas, the Leicester City left-back who spent last season on loan at Sheffield United and Middlesbrough, that has raised most eyebrows though. Thomas was a regular for England Under-21s between 2021 and 2023 but has rarely, if ever, been mentioned as a contender for the senior side.
With England short of left-backs, and with Luke Shaw and Ben Chilwell among the players not to agree to rights deals with Topps, the company was forced to look a long way down the England pecking order to find an option.
“It was a surprise when I opened a pack and got Luke Thomas,” says Mike Lawrence, a West Bromwich Albion supporter from Solihull and a regular collector. “I genuinely didn’t know who he was.
“I put it in a WhatsApp group of my football mates, ‘Why is this?’. So when I got him I looked into it and realised that some other players would be missing.”
As well as the absence of some big names, generic flags (the alternative Topps opted for when emblems were not available) are mixed with official badges, leaving fans feeling short-changed.
“UEFA ran a fair and competitive tender process for the rights to the official UEFA EURO 2024 sticker album, which was awarded to Topps,” UEFA told The Athleticin a statement. “However, please be informed that official licensed products that include National Association IP (intellectual property) and individual player IP require a wide number of individual contractual agreements.
“These are sometimes not possible due to existing, exclusive agreements being in place with other competing parties, which is why, if you look back in the history of major football tournament sticker albums, there are often some players or IP relating to national associations missing in the official albums.”
Lawrence says players have been missing from previous albums but the issue seems more acute in 2024. “I have collected the sticker albums in the past and I’ve done some Premier League ones in the past,” he says. “I think it has happened before, but it’s been more obvious in this edition.
“When I looked back at the England page for the France 2016 sticker album, there were six or seven players who didn’t make the squad but they were players who might well have been in the squad but just didn’t quite get in, so it was nowhere near as obvious as this.
“There were players like Leighton Baines, Phil Jones, Theo Walcott and Danny Welbeck — England players but people who didn’t quite make the squad.”
The problems for Topps went beyond just the absence of some players.
With qualifying play-offs for the tournament continuing into late March, the stickers and albums had to be printed before the final 24-team line-up was finalised. So the album features quarter-page sections for each team to reach the play-offs. That means nations including Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Luxembourg, who fell at the final qualifying hurdle, are in the album despite not making it.
That means that there is a sticker of Birmingham City’s teenage academy graduate Jordan James, who plays for Wales, but not of Real Madrid’s big summer signing Mbappe.
Topps is confident the issues will not be repeated when it takes over the Premier League’s official sticker album from 2025 in a deal announced earlier this year. Premier League clubs enter into collective commercial agreements, so acquiring image rights will not be a problem.
And with four years to iron out problems before the next European Championships, there is optimism that a similar issue can be avoided on the international stage in future, too.
“UEFA remains committed to having the most authentic licensed products for fans possible and will continue to encourage open dialogue amongst the respective IP holders in relation to future competitions with an objective of achieving this,” the governing body said.
Either way, Lawrence doesn’t seem to mind too much: “I’ve still enjoyed doing it. With the other nations, I haven’t really noticed it because I don’t know their squads as well.”
