Outside of a sold-out American Airlines Center where the Dallas Mavericks almost pulled off a comeback against the Boston Celtics in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, street vendors yell at fans in boisterous attempts to get attention.
“Get your Mavs gear here!”
The money made from Game 3 and Game 4 in Dallas won’t be enough to make any street vendor a millionaire overnight, but anything to help pay the bills helps, they said. The Dallas Mavericks’ journey to the NBA Finals, their first in 13 years, has attracted a cottage industry of sports merchandise peddlers, many unlicensed, looking to cash in on Luka, Kyrie and the team’s ascendance to an NBA championship contender.
Vendors dotted the outside of the arena before and during Game 3 with T-shirts, jerseys and other fan gear aimed at enthusiastic fans who had already spent hundreds on tickets.
Victor Zapata, a Dallas native, has been capitalizing on Dallas’ playoff success since the NBA Finals started. Even when the Mavericks were playing at Boston’s TD Garden, he was selling T-shirts from his company, Dallas-based UNSPONSORED, outside of the AAC’s watch party.
The brand focuses on exclusively selling Dallas sports apparel like oversized T-shirts with unique hand-drawn designs for $60. As the Mavericks have gotten deeper into the playoffs, he’s found that more people are flocking to his merchandise, he said.
“We sold out Game 1 and 2, so we had to double our inventory today. We’ve already had to restock once since it’s so busy out here,” Zapata said. “Being born and raised here, I want to put on for my city, too. We don’t care if there’s another team that we could sell merchandise for. This is just the kind of moment we’ve been waiting for.”
Zapata has some stiff competition with dozens of others looking to cash in on the Mavericks craze. People have even traveled from beyond Dallas to see if they can make some money.
Ricky Beery, founder of Ricky’s Fashion, is from California and came to Dallas with the sole purpose of making money from the Mavericks playoff run. Both him and Zapata sold T-shirts based on the Mavericks, but since they don’t use player likenesses, they’re allowed to sell them, Beery said.
“I’m just out here hustling like everybody else,” he said. “We don’t sell bootlegs. This is a gray-area product. We don’t put anyone’s name on it, and that’s how we do it.”
Beery has been selling “gray area products” at around $20 for the last 30 years outside the country’s premier sporting events. Before the NBA Finals, he was at Super Bowl LVIII selling San Francisco 49ers merchandise.
At the end of the day, the goal is to collect as much money as he can, he said.
“We just go to big events and sell as much as we can. We take the crumbs like they come. All I want is a little crumb,” he said. “That’s all I want. I’m not trying to get rich.”
When there are people like Beery, who have been selling merchandise for three decades, it makes it especially difficult for the newcomers on the scene. By day, Kevin Tinkham does corporate financing. By night, he’s been selling jerseys for the past year.
He’s an individual seller who hopes to garner enough support for his jerseys so he can quit his day job to focus full time on selling apparel, he said.
“This has always just been a side hustle. It’s partly about the money but also about just having fun. I love mixing it up with so many people just trying to have a good time,” Tinkham said. “But believe me, this is the dream. Corporate financing, not so much. This is the first time I’ve heard ‘Thank you’ while doing my job.”
Jersey prices have increased with some costing hundreds of dollars. Tinkham and many others outside the AAC believe the secret sauce is to sell merchandise at a lower cut than official team stores. Tinkham is selling his jerseys for as low as $40. Official jerseys at the Mavericks team shop sell for $130.
So much competition means that for some, it’s less about making money and more about promoting their brand. Keenan McKinney, founder and CEO of faith-based clothing brand Be blessed, would usually sell his Mavericks merchandise for $30.
But since arriving to the AAC, he found that being open to haggling and taking lower margins on his T-shirts may be the best way to ultimately boost his brand, he said. For Game 3, he was going all the way down to $15 to sell some shirts.
“We made these T-shirts as the Mavericks were making it deeper into the playoffs. In the future, we’ll probably keep making more of these types of shirts,” he said. “But it’s more about purpose and trying to bring people closer to God. Money is really minimum for me and I’m not making much of a profit off this. I just hope I make my money back.”
Zapata, Beery, Tinkham and McKinney, all of whom declined to disclose how much they make per night on their merchandise, are all planning on returning to Game 4 to sell their merchandise. If they’re lucky, the Mavericks can find some momentum in the series so that the dollars keep flowing, Beery said.
“They’re down 3-0, so it’s harder to sell this stuff. If they were up 3-0, I mean, oh boy,” he said. “If these guys were winning the series, I guarantee people would be buying a lot more.”
