Not really surprising at all. Fanatics is partially owned by the major U.S. sports leagues, and their relative player's unions/associations. They are in the process of buiiding a complete vertical market to control (and profit) from as many aspects of their respective sports as they can. By going vertical, instead of horizontal, they can better escape anti-trust scrutiny, and with the various leagues/player's associations involved, they control they rights as to who can even issue cards of current/future players. Exactly how they cut Topps, and their IPO aspirations, right off at the knees, and then swooped in to buy and take over Topps at about half of what their IPO had projected as their entity value. The next step I can see is Fanatics now looking for their own grading company as well.
Based on their previous/current actions, Fanatics looks for current existing companies to take over and work with, so I would expect them to attempt to try getting an already established and accepted TPG. Based on that thinking, I would assume PSA, which is privately owned by the group that took over Collectors Universe (and also has Golding Auctions in their holdings) is likely not available for sale. Nor would one think that Fanatics would have bothered picking up PWCC if they were looking to acquire the PSA parent company that already owns Goldin Auctions. They wouldn't need both PWCC AND Goldin.
Meanwhile, CSG is part of a larger, world-wide third-party grading company, Certified Collectibles Group (CCG), that includes companies/divisions that also grade currency, comic books, and such. And since they (CSG) entered the sports card TPG industry not that long ago, I don't see their parent company looking to sell off this newest division of theirs's, and I don't see Fanatics having any interest looking in taking over the entire CCG parent company and additionally getting into grading currency, comics, and such. So to my thinking, that would eliminate CSG from being a target of Fanatics as well.
Also, both PSA and CSG currently have deals/arrangements with Ebay as their Authentication Program partners. Acquiring PWCC would tend to make one think that Fanatics is looking for their own, separate market place, and not be involved with selling on Ebay at all. So, looking at either PSA or CSG doesn't make sense since that would suddenly tie Fanatics to Ebay as well.
That leaves SGC and Beckett grading services as the remaining two possible/most likely targets IMO. Due to some of the other areas that Beckett is involved in, such as their magazines/periodicals, not so sure Fanatics would be looking to jump into that area, and not sure Beckett would be willing to just sell off their grading services alone. That leaves me thinking that SGC would be the most likely target for Fanatics if they do decide to also shoot for their own grading service. Though SGC is known/favored more in the hobby as a vintage card grading company, can only imagine the leaps forward they could take with the financial backing of the likes of those behind Fanatics, including maybe getting a registry up and running again.
After, or maybe even before, that, I wonder if a major Breaker may not be in Fanatics acquisition crosshairs as well. Or they may just create their own alternative to the Breakers as they are already a well-established direct marketing company themselves.
Will be interesting to see where Fanatics goes with this PWCC acquisition and how they utilize the company going forward. I would fully expect Fanatics to retain current top management to continue running their new company/division (ie: Brent and Betsy), at least for a period of time to properly transition PWCC operations to Fanatics' control/direction. This acquisition may also explain, at least partially, the recent news about layoffs having occurred at PWCC. Possibly a little "house cleaning" prior to the new owners moving in? I can imagine this is just another piece in Fanatic's overall plans going forward to develop, expand and further control their vertical market of sports related cards/collectibles.
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