Powering speed: How Fanatics handles 8,000 orders a minute
When a big win sends orders soaring, ONESOURCE helps this global sports platform giant keep pace
Chosen by changemakers
Supporting business transformation
Fanatics' sales quadrupled over the past four years. Its tax team didn't have to. The same accountants absorb every surge, including the rush for championship gear while the confetti is still falling — ONESOURCE for the win.
Fanatics has evolved from a commerce business selling licensed team merchandise into a global sports platform spanning commerce, collectibles, gaming, and events. Each new business brings new tax complexity across more jurisdictions, along with new challenges. For example, the Knicks' 2026 NBA Championship win resulted in more than 8,000 orders per minute. Larry Van Blerkom's team needed to be ready as soon as the game ended to process an unprecedented volume of orders without keeping fans waiting.
Meet Fanatics
Fanatics is redefining how fans engage with the teams, players, and moments they love. The company's businesses deliver personalized, immersive, and engaging experiences to more than 100 million fans globally. In 2026, Fanatics Studios partnered with ESPN to broadcast the four-day Fanatics Fest event, which drew 200,000 fans to see celebrities like Tom Brady, LeBron James, David Beckham, and more.
Larry Van Blerkom, Senior Vice President, Tax at Fanatics, has relied on Thomson Reuters technology throughout his 30-plus-year career as a tax leader. Based in Fanatics' New York City office, Van Blerkom has leveraged ONESOURCE to guide his tax team through a period of extraordinary growth for the company.
One trusted foundation
ONESOURCE gives Fanatics a single source of truth for tax determinations across its retail, e-commerce, and wholesale channels. That trustworthy foundation is crucial in a growing retail business, where sales tax rules can change from one county to the next, or from one side of a street to the other. Integrated directly with Fanatics' Oracle Fusion enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, ONESOURCE keeps pace with those changes automatically without manual updates.
Fiduciary-Grade AI™ in action
When sales spike, Fanatics can't afford to make mistakes. ONESOURCE gives Van Blerkom's team answers powered by Fiduciary-Grade AI that tax professionals can trust, grounded in authoritative, up-to-the-minute Thomson Reuters content. Every determination traces back to a source the team can locate and verify, keeping tax professionals in the driver's seat.
As Fanatics has expanded into new businesses and geographic markets, the tax questions Van Blerkom's team faces have multiplied. Rather than patching together separate solutions, Fanatics tax professionals have built a connected stack of Thomson Reuters tools to match — all integrated with Oracle Fusion for seamlessness at scale.
The tools Fanatics uses
ONESOURCE powered by CoCounsel
ONESOURCE Indirect Tax Determination calculates sales and use, VAT, GST, and excise taxes across all sales and purchases.
ONESOURCE Pagero helps companies keep up as nations across the globe adopt mandatory e-invoicing. It automatically formats documents to meet each government's requirements in more than 80 countries.
ONESOURCE Sales and Use Tax automates sales and use tax returns across 1,200 U.S. jurisdictions with AI-driven touchless compliance.
ONESOURCE Income Tax supports corporate tax returns in all their complexity, handling the calculations behind them and filing electronically with the IRS.
ONESOURCE Tax Provision automates global tax provision with ASC 740 and IAS 12 calculations, instant drill-down reporting, Excel integration, and ERP-ready journal entries that reduce manual work and errors.
“When a big event happens in sports, we know there’s going to be a spike in sales, and we need a partner we can rely on. We rely on Thomson Reuters.”
Larry Van Blerkom
Senior Vice President, Tax
Fanatics
Potential unlocked, demand met, accuracy assured
Learn how ONESOURCE helps Fanatics' tax team move at the speed of sports without sacrificing precision.
Eliminating hundreds of hours of work
Van Blerkom's team has more to keep track of every year. Through its Neo.Tax integration, ONESOURCE mines company engineering data to support research and development (R&D) tax credits. That capability is huge — for Fanatics, it turned a process that once took hundreds of hours of fact-finding employee interviews into an automatic preliminary analysis delivered in a single weekend.
Slashing costs and reducing overhead
Since bringing tax compliance in-house with ONESOURCE, Fanatics has saved millions of dollars. The team has also seen some of its first “no-change” audits, proving the reliability of the tax content ONESOURCE runs on.
Protecting the fan experience
When a title win sends orders skyrocketing, ONESOURCE calculates tax accurately on every transaction in real time. A lot rides on accuracy in these moments — undercharging would add costs for Fanatics down the line and overcharging would negatively impact the fan experience. Van Blerkom can trust ONESOURCE to make the correct determination every time.
Focusing on the fans
A changemaker in his field, Van Blerkom has relied on Thomson Reuters for more than 30 years and appreciates how its technology has evolved to meet the needs of companies like Fanatics. ONESOURCE gives Fanatics tax professionals the confidence to know that even its most demanding sales opportunities are covered, whether it's a championship-led spike in demand or an entry into an entirely new business. Thanks to Van Blerkom's vision, the tax team can innovate alongside the broader company, using Thomson Reuters technology to go beyond simple compliance into proactive tax solutions. Ultimately, Fanatics can focus on what it does best — enhancing the fan experience.
“Our mission is to relentlessly enhance the fan experience. We want the fan to pay the right amount, get their product quickly, and never experience a delay because of sales tax.”
Larry Van Blerkom
Senior Vice President, Tax
Fanatics
ONESOURCE
A single, cloud-native platform for global tax and e-invoicing compliance.
Tax and e-invoicing regulations change constantly. ONESOURCE gives businesses one centralized solution, fully integrated with the ERPs and systems they already run on.
81%
reduction in invoice costs for businesses using ONESOURCE
90%
efficiency gains reported by ONESOURCE customers
95%
compliance automation achieved with ONESOURCE
ONESOURCE powered by CoCounsel brings Fiduciary-Grade AI to corporations covering the entire tax and trade life cycle
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