The Counterfeit Sports Memorabilia and Equipment market consists of two separate but related industries. The Counterfeit Sports Memorabilia market consists of products that claim to be team or player products but are not authentic. Counterfeit Sports Equipment products are items that are sold under brand names without the authority of the copyright holders.

50 percent of the $1 billion sports memorabilia industry is counterfeited.

Source: US Department of Justice, ” Three year FBI and IRS Investigation reveals nationwide black market dealing in hundreds of million of dollars in counterfeit sports and celebrity memorabilia” , Press Release, April 12, 2000, (accessed: April 18, 2006), and Marshall Loeb, ” Look out for fake sports memorabilia” , MarketWatch, September 19, 2005.

The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced that more than 4,000 pieces of counterfeit NBA items worth an estimated $200,000 was seized during the NBA All-Star Weekend in Dallas, Texas.

Source:  Associated Press, “Nearly $200,000 in fake NBA gear seized,” NBC Sports, February 15, 2010.

The United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement reported that in the month leading up to the 2010 Super Bowl in South Florida, agents seized 8,165 counterfeit Super Bowl memorabilia worth an estimated $400,000.

Source:  Michael David Smith, “Feds seize $400,000 in counterfeit Super Bowl memorabilia,” Pro Football Talk, February 18, 2010.

At the 2009 Super Bowl in Tampa, US Customs seized 15,653 counterfeit items worth $1,826,562.

At the 2008 Super Bowl in Arizona, US Customs seized 10,212 counterfeit items worth $542,120.

Source:  Megan Chuchmach, “Super Bowl Fans: Watch Out for Counterfeit NFL Goods,” ABC News, February 5, 2010.

In 2005, sports apparel maker Colombia Sportswear seized 250,000 counterfeit pieces of clothing.

Source: Laura Palotie and Alexandra Zendrian, “Attack of the $35 Gucci Handbag,” INC, April 29, 2008.

Pirated streams of professional sports games are spreading across the Internet, creating concern for the professional sports league.

From the IHT:

After years of focusing on the pirating of highlight clips and photos on the Web, the major professional sports leagues are finding that pirated feeds of live games are now common and becoming a menace to their businesses, especially at a time when leagues are trying to build their own businesses offering live games on the Internet for a subscription fee.

The article mentions Major League Baseball and how online piracy is affecting the league. In 2007, MLB found 3,000 incidents of its live feed being pirated on the Internet. In 2008, they found 5,000 incidents.

As the Philadelphia Phillies attempt to close out the World Series tonight after rain suspended their game against the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday, Major League Baseball has been keeping busy seizing counterfeit apparel from street vendors.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Since the playoffs began, MLB investigators have seized more than 5,000 counterfeit T-shirts and caps from about 45 vendors hawking them in the vicinity of Citizens Bank Park, said Ethan Orlinsky, general counsel for Major League Baseball Properties.

The fakes are often hard to distinguish from their properly licensed counterparts, although they may be made with substandard materials that won’t wear or wash as well, said Orlinsky, whose office oversees licensing deals for the National and American Leagues and all 30 teams.

To help fans tell the difference, MLB requires that each legitimate item, large or small, be tagged with a silver holographic sticker bearing a serial number and MLB’s silhouetted-batter logo. For this year’s World Series, MLB refined the sticker to include a raised red stitch that mimics the stitching on a baseball.

Merchandise sales are big business for baseball – making it to the World Series is expected to generate at least $4 million in extra sales of Phillies memorabilia. Orlinsky said it was no surprise that the Fall Classic is a magnet for counterfeiters.

Major League Baseball is ramping up its anti-counterfeit program to ensure that World Series Memorabilia is kept safe from counterfeits.

From the Boston Globe:

Once the first inning of every playoff game ends, Major League Baseball’s authentication program goes into effect. During Game 5 of the American League Championship Series at Fenway Park, groundskeepers rushed onto the field and replaced the bases. MLB authenticator and 37-year Boston police veteran Jim Carr waited for the bases in Canvas Alley, the field-level walkway with direct access to the diamond.

Carr laid the bases in a row and tagged each one with a specially designed hologram. He repeated the process after the second inning, then carted the two sets of authenticated bases to a closet deep beneath the ballpark.

The closet contains a treasure trove of memorabilia, everything from bases to balls to lineup cards to broken bats to the Korbel champagne bottles popped when the Red Sox clinched the American League Division Series. Every piece of memorabilia is registered as authentic in an MLB database by the coded hologram that disintegrates when removed, preventing the transfer from one piece to another.

When the World Series starts tonight, the treasure trove of more than 2 million pieces of authenticated memorabilia will grow again as baseball works overtime to safeguard its history and protect its fans from counterfeiters.

“Baseball sells its history,” said Bob DuPuy, MLB’s president and chief operating officer. “We want to ensure what our fans get is, in fact, authentic and genuine.”

Ticket scalpers in China lost money when Chinese Olympic hero Liu Xiang dropped out of the 110 meters hurdles to injury. 

From BBC News:

Olympic tickets are being sold for as little as a tenth of their previous black-market value after a Chinese athlete dropped out.

The price for tickets to see the 110m hurdles plummeted after athletics hero Liu Xiang withdrew.

There were also small but noticeable pockets of empty seats during the race at the “Bird’s Nest” stadium on Thursday.

Had China’s most famous athlete been in the race, it would have been packed.

Tickets for this event, which had a face value of up to 800 yuan ($117), were the most sought after at this Olympics.

The Boston Globe has an article on the makers of Titleist Golf Balls fight against counterfeits in China. 

From the Boston Globe:

 Jason Yao lives a dangerous life for a guy in the golf business.

He gets death threats. He raids factories and markets. He shakes down informants and hangs out with private investigators. He has 10 aliases.

China is the focus of the worldwide war against counterfeit golf products, and Yao is on the front lines. His employer, Acushnet, located 7,000 miles away in Fairhaven, Mass., makes the world’s most popular – and most copied – golf ball, the Titleist Pro V1, along with clubs, accessories, and shoes that counterfeiters mimic for sales around the globe.