NEW YORK — In Brian Sanchez's slice of Astoria, the FIFA World Cup doesn't begin with the first match.It starts weeks earlier, with the arrival of a sticker album — and a mission.It's a deceptively simple one: Fill the book with all the stickers representing World Cup teams, players, venues and other tournament details.
But these stickers are sold in blind packs, similar to baseball or Pokémon cards, which adds to the fun and the headaches. Sanchez, 20, has tried to complete the task before but never succeeded.This year, he planned to skip it altogether, but it was hard to ignore the chatter and excitement among his friends and family — both at home and abroad — who were all participating."Honestly it comes down to a little bit of FOMO," he said.The hunt for stickers, produced by the Italian company Panini, is a decades-old World Cup tradition that's especially popular in Latin America and Europe.
In the U.S., interest has been building steadily over the years, but this summer, the buzz is bigger than ever.Jason Howarth, senior vice president of marketing and athlete relations at Panini America, said retailers reported being sold out of sticker packets within a week of the release in late April — unseen in previous World Cup cycles."There's a different energy coming out of it," he said."Right now, it's outpacing where we were in 2022 by three to five times."The surging demand comes as collectors face their toughest challenge yet.
This year, they need to track down 980 distinct stickers to put the album to bed — 310 more than at the 2022 World Cup and a record number for the company.It's a reflection of the upcoming tournament's historic scale, which is expanding from 32 teams to 48 across three countries.This edition will also be the second to last men's World Cup sticker album produced by Panini — ending a partnership that stretches back over five decades.
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