Three months ago, MLB signed Topps Company to a major contract to produce and market baseball cards with the MLB teams’ logo. This was an exclusive contract to the detriment to other card making companies such as Upper Deck.
Now, Topps has scored another coup. They have reached agreement with Major League Baseball Properties in a multi-year licensing deal to produce certain nationally distributed Minor League cards.
The agreement makes Topps the only trading card manufacturer licensed by MLBP to produce nationally-distributed trading cards of top draft picks and prospects within Minor League Baseball, and will give Topps the rights to names and logos of the 160 affiliated Minor League clubs and current Minor League players in uniform on baseball cards and stickers beginning on January 1, 2010. In addition, Topps will now have the exclusive use of the Pro Debut logo. Its first product will be its 2010 Topps Pro Debut Series 1 to be unveiled in early March 2010.
As it was three months ago, this deal is exclusive.