Fanatics and OpenAI Launch AI Shopping Tool for Sports Merchandise

October 26, 2026 - 13:11

Fanatics is rolling out a new shopping feature built with OpenAI technology that aims to make browsing its massive catalog of sports merchandise easier and faster. The company has integrated OpenAI Codex into a tool called Shop the Look, which lets customers describe what they want in plain language and receive product suggestions drawn from more than 1.5 million items.

The feature is designed to address a familiar problem for online shoppers: too much choice. Fanatics carries apparel, hats, jerseys and collectibles across teams, leagues and sports, and finding a specific item often means digging through filters and search results. Shop the Look shifts that work to the AI, which interprets a shopper's description and surfaces matching products from the catalog.

The partnership reflects a broader push among retailers to use generative AI for product discovery rather than just customer service chatbots. For Fanatics, the appeal is practical. Better search and recommendations can shorten the path from browsing to checkout, which matters in a business built on high-volume, seasonal demand around major sporting events.

The company has not shared details on how widely the feature will be available or how it will handle edge cases, such as requests for items that do not exist in the catalog. Still, the launch signals that AI-assisted shopping is moving from experiment to everyday storefront tool, and sports retail is the latest arena for that shift.