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Millions of football fans are putting down their iPads to collect and trade football stickers, a decades-old hobby that has defied the digital age.
A children’s game played mostly by adults, FIFA’s Brazil World Cup sticker album is a cult phenomenon and multimillion-dollar business for the Panini Group, an Italian company that has been printing the cards since Mexico hosted the Cup in 1970.
Fans around the world are buying envelopes, ripping them open and frantically trading cards featuring Lionel Messi, Neymar, Cristiano Ronaldo or Wayne Rooney.
Panini doesn’t disclose sales projections, but executives say this year’s World Cup will set records for the Modena-based company. “It is all about football and the pleasure of swapping cards,” said advertising executive Alexandre Gabel, 37, who took his sons to a sticker fair in Sao Paulo, one of many taking place across the globe.
The glossy cards became such a hot commodity that a delivery truck carrying 300,000 stickers was stolen in Rio de Janeiro, worrying fans over a possible shortage.
