Why Does Fanatics Hate Jalen Hurts?

Fans are furious with Fanatics for failing them.

Say that 5 times fast. That's how mad they are.

But it seems that the Philadelphia Eagles and Jalen Hurts are getting the worst of the massive sports apparel and merchandise company's mishaps.

While Hurts and his Eagles were pulling off a 34-28 victory over the Vikings (RIP those that took Eagles and gave the points) a thread on socials began going viral showing A LOT of mess ups with Jalen Hurts apparel that Eagles fans spent with their hard-earned money.

One Twitter (X) user posted a photo of a Hurts shirt that they purchased from the Official NFL Shop which is owned and distributed by Fanatics that showed an absurdly crooked Jalen Hurts No. 1 on it.

Thinking it was perhaps just a mistake, the Twitter user went to the platform to see if anybody else had any issues.

... They did alright.

Immediately, posts and screenshots began coming in showing various Hurts jerseys having issues with them.

This person claims theirs arrived with some sort of fluid on it which is uhh, quite disturbing.

FANATICS RESPONDS

To be fair, one could expect maybe a misprint or a mishap to happen here or there... but it's Week 1 of the damn NFL season and to have ALL these issues is pretty damn terrible for what is supposed to be the leading sports apparel distributor.

I spoke with a Fanatics spokesperson who issued OutKick the following statement: “First and foremost, we are nothing without our fans. And even though it was only small number of products that were impacted, it is completely unacceptable that these items were ever produced and then shipped. One wrong order or unhappy fan is too many - we take every complaint very seriously and are immediately contacting and assisting all fans who may have been impacted by the errors to make it right.”

Props to Fanatics for responding and acknowledging the issue. I can tell you that doesn't happen all the time when major corporations do fans wrong - glad the affected fans will have the issue resolved.

Fanatics will assist fans that received the erroneous Hurts jersey as well as other ones I've cited like this Colts fan who just wanted to support rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson.

and Devonta Smith from the Eagles

... even Tom Brady!

FANATICS LICENSES NFL, MLB, NHL AND NBA

Now I actually do have a pretty good background in merchandise and apparel and how it works. Without boring you all to death, let's just say that with SO many egregious examples of mistakes someone, somewhere should have thought to say "Hey uhh, maybe we should make sure that the floor the printers are on is actually level..." or that the stitching material was up-to-basic industry standards.

I personally don't have an issue with Fanatics per say. But the bigger issue is that they undoubtedly have a monopoly on the ENTIRE sports industry right now. They are the exclusive rights holders for all the NBA, MLB, NFL and other leagues merchandise. That means unless you're dropping a TON of money on the authentic-authentic jersey, you are stuck with either Fanatics or some bootleg product from China that you pray even shows up. Hell, they just bought out Topps!

Having that much power in the hands of any entity in any industry could be a cause for concern.

Good for Fanatics for responding and hopefully there are less mishaps in the future moving forward. Otherwise, God bless their social media and Customer Service department for dealing with complaints from football fans.