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The last place you might expect to see representations of sports fandom — at least outside of Quidditch — is New York Comic Con, the epicenter of comic book culture and all its many offshoots on the east coast. At an event where it’s more jarring to see a person not elaborately dressed up as a fictional character, surely there would be little sign of real-world athletic pursuits… right?

Well, after attending the 2025 edition of NYCC, The Athletic’s collectibles editors can confirm how wrong that is.

We tirelessly scoured the expansive show floor at the Javits Center to see what signs of sports we could find. They were both plentiful and often times unexpected. Here’s what we came across.

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On Thursday, the first day of the four-day convention, a clear theme quickly emerged: Philadelphia sports fans were everywhere. Amidst the many Batmen, Spider-Men and K-Pop Demon Hunters, there was a variety of Phillies and Eagles garb on display. The first example we spotted was a man wearing a 2024 NFC champions hoodie (obviously someone who committed to a purchase too soon and is determined to still get his wear out of it. Then came the jerseys — a black Eagles Saquon Barkley, a home Jordan Mailata draped over a ladder as a vendor showed off the “Go Birds!” T-shirt he had on underneath it. Another vendor wore a Nick Foles jersey as he sorted through knockoff Lego character figures. There were also an assortment of Phillies hats and tops.

This all made some degree of sense. Philadelphia is nearby, the Eagles were playing the New York Giants at Metlife Stadium that night and the Phillies were facing the Dodgers out west in what would prove to be a convergence of Philly sports misery. But why rep these teams at Comic Con? Because that’s how Philly fans roll. They’d wear Eagles jerseys to a funeral (something one of us has personally witnessed on multiple occasions).

So on Thursday, Philly sports fans made their presence known, and over the following days they continued to do so in lesser but still significant numbers as escaping to fictional universes became more appealing following their catastrophic losses.

Beyond the Philly fans, there were plenty of other real teams and players being represented.

Hats:

• New York Yankees
• New York Mets
• New York Rangers
• New York Knicks
• Chicago White Sox
• Arizona Diamondbacks
• LA Dodgers (including a blacked out version worn by legendary artist and DC Comics CCO Jim Lee as he gave a tutorial on how to draw Wonder Woman on eBay Live)

Jerseys:

• Francisco Lindor, Mets City Connect
• Kaka, Brazil home yellow
• Kylian Mbappe, Real Madrid blue
• Andres Iniesta, Barcelona home
• New Jersey Devils
• And the most impressive: Mike Zuke, University of Michigan hockey

(That’s not to mention the many jerseys of fictional characters like Charlie Conway and Goldberg from “The Mighty Ducks,” Al Bundy’s Polk High jersey from “Married with Children,” AFC Richmond jerseys from “Ted Lasso,” Bobby Boucher’s South Central Louisiana State jersey from “The Waterboy,” and the Hanson brothers’ Charlestown Chiefs jersey from “Slapshot” —complete with taped glasses.)

Aside from the attire of a subset of attendees, sports were also represented in fascinating ways via the products on offer around the convention. The most on-the-nose were the only two athletes who had comic books about them prominently displayed: Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. East Side Comics created variant covers of biographical comics about Judge and Ohtani in collaboration with Topps based on each player’s baseball cards. The Ohtani comic even covers the Ippei Mizuhara gambling scandal.

Another prominent mix of sports and more traditional Comic Con fare was in the booth of artist S. Preston, who combines licenses with MLB, the NHL, NCAA, Disney, Looney Tunes and Sesame Street to create unique works of classic characters repping a variety of teams.

Artist Brian Kong’s booth featured his sketch cards for Topps and the 2016 Chicago Cubs replicating an iconic Justice League comic cover.

There were NFL mini helmet Transformers (coming out this fall) at the Hasbro booth.

There was a Luka Doncic Slam Magazine (limited gold variant) on display at the CGC Grading booth.

The Goldin Auctions booth featured a variety of sports cards and memorabilia, plus a cast-autographed copy of the Grays Sports Almanac from “Back to the Future II”

Action figures were available all over the convention floor, but one booth had a supremely random assortment of sports figures, including a Jim Jackson Starting Lineup and a Mike Lowell figure.

Another booth had an array of retro sports patches for sale.

The Penguin Books booth promoted a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar graphic novel with a life-size image of the hall-of-famer.

Fanhome showed off its models of a couple of iconic Formula 1 cars and the Ducati Desmosedici GP23 next to models of Darth Vader and the DeLorean from “Back to the Future.”

Michael Jordan was also well represented. From the somewhat expected “Space Jam” items…

To an artistic rendering of Jordan dunking on Patrick Ewing (an interesting choice for a New York event).

Artist Tony Santiago displayed works featuring another Chicago Bulls legend in Derrick Rose, plus Walter Payton, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Kobe Bryant and Caitlin Clark, as well as the stars of “Major League.”

There were even a number of professional athletes signing autographs on the convention floor, all representing Comic Con’s favorite athletic endeavor: pro wrestling. At various booths selling wrestling action figures, former WWE stars like Sgt. Slaughter, Jake “The Snake” Robert, Papa Shango, Matt Cardona, Karrion Kross and Scarlett Bordeaux met with fans.

So sports were well represented at New York Comic Con, albeit in some exceedingly random ways.

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