This is an update of a story that was first published in November 20, 2022.
When the Italian sticker company “Panini”, releases its album of stickers for the quadrennial event, it is said that the World Cup officially begins. The 2022 U.S. Edition featured 670 stickers on 80 pages representing players from the 32 competing countries.
Panini on 60 Minutes In the months before the World Cup, it prints up to 11 million packets of stickers per day. Each packet includes five stickers for $1.20. The album included a spread of each team who played in Qatar, including player photos, shiny team logos, and stickers honoring previous World Cup-winning teams. Collectors often trade duplicate stickers in order to collect the 670 required stickers. Panini has become so popular that it has spawned an entire ecosystem of swapping – online groups and organized meetups.
The football, or The sticker craze began in Modena in 1961, when four brothers from the Panini family started selling collectible stickers of Italian soccer stars at their family newsstand in the north of Italy. Panini began by selling stickers to children. However, the company estimates that 40% of its collectors are now adults.
Draggan Mihailovich has had the story on his radar for years. The piece was a collaboration between Mihailovich and Jon Wertheim, a correspondent for 60 Minutes.
Mihailovich revealed to 60 Minutes Overtime, “The story began when I collected Panini World Cup Sticker Albums in 1974. I was only 12 years old at the time.” “We were in Yugoslavia in June of ’74, visiting relatives, and my father went to a newspaper kiosk and saw these black packets of stickers with…a drawing of a soccer player on it. He was interested, so he bought some, bought an entire album, then showed it to us, asking, “Here, what do think?” We didn’t understand what it was at first, but we became hooked as we ripped open the packets to see these players that came alive in our hands. It was almost like an addiction.
Mihailovich, who spent five weeks traveling in Europe, returned to North Carolina just two stickers shy of finishing the album.
Mihailovich stated that his father noticed an address at the back of the book and decided to send a letter. “Six weeks after that, we receive a letter containing the stickers. So we finished our album. “I was hooked from that point on.”
60 Minutes
Panini’s sticker service, which was missing at the time, provided the two remaining stickers. The team, which was once staffed by teachers who answered letters from children, has been modernized with a staff of people who operate machinery to sort through the vast archive of stickers. Panini said to 60 Minutes that it offers the opportunity to complete the collection, and believes the services are a key ingredient in the Panini formula’s success. Collectors who have had trouble swapping duplicates can purchase up to 50 stickers each for $0.40.
Panini printed stickers of both well-known and forgotten players in the same quantities at the same time. Panini has denied that it prints fewer stickers for hard-to find players like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Cristiano or Lionel Messi.
Antonio Allegra is the director of soccer marketing at Panini. Allegra said, “We print all stickers in the exact same quantity.” “There is no rarity in the stickers. But [it] is the market that creates the rare stickers…Maybe you are an Argentina fan. And you find [Lionel] Messi. The first sticker is for you collection. The second one is in your wallet…So you don’t use the Messi stickers in the swapping market. It became rarer by default.”
Panini has said that there is no statistically significant difference between buying a sticker pack and finding the American Christian Pulisic, or the Portuguese Cristiano Cristiano. Both players are featured in the 2022 World Cup Collection.
Draggan Mihailovich of 60 Minutes completed his 2022 album 48 years after beating the likes German legend Franz Beckenbauer or Dutch legend Johan Cruyff by exchanging stickers in exchange for a Madrid trip.
The video above, which was originally published November 20, 2022, was produced by Keith Zubrow. Joe Schanzer edited the video.