World Cup fans in Canada aren’t just watching the games. They’re also eagerly hunting for 980 Panini stickers

At a local shopping mall in Burnaby, B.C., Christian Pazmino and his eight-year-old boy Felipe spent little joe weekends swapping Panini FIFA domain transfuse stickers with strangers — hoping to occupy 980 spots in an album and complete their own kind of championship. 

The tradition began for soccer fans in Europe and Latin America in 1970, when Italian publishing company Panini released its first official World Cup sticker collection for the tournament in Mexico. 

And with this World Cup happening across Canada, the U.S. And Mexico, the hobby is catching on in North America. 

This year's edition is the largest, because the tournament features 48 teams instead of the usual 32. Each team’s collection includes 18 player stickers, one team photo and one team badge, along with 20 special stickers celebrating the World Cup and its history.

They’re tucked inside surprise packs of seven sold at kiosks, bookstores, gas stations and online. But to fill your album, you’ll likely need to follow Felipe’s lead: trading.

In fact, 4,446 people across four locations in the U.S. And Mexico swapped stickers this past Sunday, setting a Guinness World Record for the largest sports sticker exchange in eight hours.

Pazmino and Felipe have already completed the challenge.  Starting with two boxes — which hold a combined 700 stickers — the father-son team then turned to the trading community, swapping  the ones they were missing and tracking their progress through an app, paper lists and a boy’s impressive memory. 

“It's quite challenging, because it's a lot of stickers,” his father said of Felipe's ability to track what they had and what they needed.

When Renan Prado, 32, moved from Brazil to B.C., he wanted to continue the tradition that had been part of his childhood. Some of his earliest memories are of swapping Panini stickers with friends at school, so he was surprised to discover the albums and sticker packs in Canada.

"I was like, 'How can I keep this tradition going in a country that isn't really known for playing football?'" he said. 

Prado moved to Canada in 2014, the same year Brazil hosted the World Cup. While working to complete his own sticker album, he created a Facebook group for collectors in Vancouver to facilitate trades. He updates the group every four years, each time a new tournament is held.

This year, the response has been "crazy," Prado said, noting the highest number of group members had previously been about 800 members. 

Now, it’s at 2,700.

"In two months, we basically had 1,200 [to] 1,300 people join without me promoting it anywhere," he said. "It's just like people organically searching.”

The fact that World Cup games are happening in North America has helped fuel the sticker collecting craze, he believes.

“It's a nice souvenir, right? Like you remember what happened, during that time,” said Prado. 

Sports cards remain the most popular collectible in North America, but Panini has found a way to engage people to collect stickers, Greg Lansdowne, the author of Panini Legends, said in an interview.

The introduction of rare “parallel” stickers in the 2022 World Cup album added a new layer of excitement, he said, referring to the limited edition stickers that come with unique coloured borders.

And that excitement translates into big money: at an auction in 2023, an ultra-rare Lionel Messi sticker sold for $139,000 after the last World Cup when Argentina won. 

For many fans, opening sticker packs in the months leading up to the tournament’s kickoff has become inseparable from the World Cup experience, Lansdowne said. 

“Even in this technological era, there are still lots of players who we won't necessarily know,” he said. €œBut when we see them on a Panini sticker, we then get to see their faces before we see them playing.” 

For Pazmino and Felipe, the most memorable moment came when they were searching for their final sticker: No. 16 on Turkey's team, İsmail Yüksek.

“At the end, when you only have one to fill, it's like the anxiety gets higher,” Pazmino said. €œThen when you have it filled, that's all gone."

Felipe entered a draw — and finally got the sticker.

Doing Panini sticker albums is something Pazmino hopes to do with his son for the rest of their lives.

"Every four years, until I'm 100 years old.” 

Journalist

Audio produced by Cecelia Armstrong

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