A merchant who sells NFL items said Amazon has been removing some of his products. When asked why they are doing so, they refer to “The Memo from the NFL.”
But, the seller said, “they have never shown me the memo, I only just saw it after Googling it and your story came up.”
In March, EcommerceBytes wrote about the notice Amazon sent to sellers warning them that they must become NFL-authorized sellers by May 24, 2021 in order to continue selling their products on its marketplace.
(Even though Amazon cited a new agreement with the NFL in its letter to sellers, the company said the 10-year Thursday Night Football deal with the NFL was unrelated to the new policy referenced in its notice to sellers.)
The seller who contacted us this week wrote, “My main question to you is, where do I go to contact the NFL to become an authorized seller? Amazon is not very helpful with this information.”
That’s the million-dollar question. If anyone has any advice and is willing to share it, please do so in the comments below.
AMZ removed my NFL stuff too. I have no idea how to be an NFL authorized seller. But it probably won’t happen because these sports clubs are very restrictive.
this is exactly why Amazon et al need to be investigated.
one hand washes the other.
You have to contact the NFL directly and fill out a licensing form. The form is easy to fill out, the financial requirements are significant. Last time I looked, the licensing fee is a minimum of $100K per year. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other way to become an authorized seller without having a licensing agreement.
You don’t have to be specifically authorized by the NFL individually. In 2016 the NFL set a policy that their distributors of licensed items could only sell their licensed products to those who had their own e-commerce platform or B & M store front. No selling to those that sell on 3p sites such as Amazon eBay etc etc
I got a letter from my distributor citing the NFL letter to them. You can google this and get the full context but here is some of it.
Sales of NFL product online
The NFL has announced that they are restricting all 3rd party online sales. As a licensee we will not be able to sell to anyone who sells our NFL products online through any 3rd party portal. All sales of our NFL products must occur through the retailer’s own e-commerce site. These restrictions include, but are not limited to, sales on amazon.com, buy.com and ebay.com. To sell our NFL products online you, as our customer, must have ownership of the URL that the transaction occurs on. If you own a URL that redirects back to a 3rd Party URL for the ultimate transaction you cannot sell our NFL products.