Laid off from Fanatics.

What Fanatics layoffs have meant for employees

Fanatics' letters spread each Florida closing over months. The Riverview letter is dated 107 days earlier than the first separation date it gave and the Jacksonville letter 81 days earlier than its own, and both expected terminations to keep coming until the closing date, so people in the same building could leave months apart. Those spans run from a letter to the state to a site's first scheduled separation, and both letters say notice went directly to the affected employees. If Fanatics gave you an individual notice at either site, the separation date on that notice is a better guide to your last day than the site's closing date.

Both letters told the state that no union contract applied to the affected employees, and both said, word for word, "Bumping rights do not exist." Each also said Fanatics was eager to facilitate any training or other resources that Florida's State Trade and Rapid Response Program makes available to affected employees. If either Florida closing cost you a job, Florida unemployment benefits sets out what a claim in the state involves, and retraining after a layoff is about the training side of a job search.

Riverview figures in an earlier fight over job losses too. The Calero complaint, filed in federal court in Tampa in September 2020, describes a shipping clerk with nearly 16 years at Fanatics, working at the same Eagle Palm Drive address, who kept getting emails and calls saying furloughed employees would be brought back, and it says those messages kept her from looking for other work. It expected Fanatics to cite COVID-19 as a circumstance it couldn't have foreseen, and it asked for WARN Act back pay and benefits for everyone in a proposed class of employees terminated on or about August 24, 2020. If you're furloughed and told you'll be recalled, you can keep job hunting while you wait.

The February 2024 cut was a restructuring inside Fanatics Commerce, and the company explained it as a matter of fit. It came five months after Andrew Low Ah Kee took over as Commerce chief executive, Sports Business Journal reported, and those cut were told it was a restructuring. A spokesman said the company had found "a very small number of positions that were no longer in alignment with our strategic priorities" as it evolved from a merchandise company into a global digital sports platform. A veteran licensing executive quoted in the same report called the reductions "disturbing, of course, but Fanatics-specific," not a sign of softness across the industry. If that restructuring included you, the company's description of the cut is neutral language you can borrow in interviews, and keeping a layoff answer short covers the rest.

Each letter closed with the company's local footprint as of its date. In January 2024 Fanatics said it employed more than 1,500 people at its Jacksonville corporate offices and ran the in-venue retail business for the Jacksonville Jaguars, and in November 2025 it put its Tampa headcount at more than 850 across corporate offices and operations facilities, along with the in-venue retail it ran for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Each notice counted only the people at the building being closed, not the offices or stadium stores. Tampa also turns up in the Commerce story, since workers there were among the February 2024 cuts. Both Florida notices are in our WARN tracker, listed as Fanatics, LLC.