With the National Football League's (NFL) opening day set to kick off this week, The Topps Company, Inc. has recently launched their latest line of collectors cards that also cater to fantasy league football fans.

In a new twist, capitalizing on the popularity of fantasy league sports, Topps has teamed up with NFL.com to incorporate fantasy football statistics, strategies, and tips to their football line of cards. The 2014 NFL collection will include "Fantasy Football Position Rank" (FFRP), which ranks NFL players according to fantasy league performance; "Fantasy Football Points Per Game" (FFPPG), which shows how many points a player is capable of scoring each game on average; as well as special "Insert" "Fantasy Strategy" cards, which give collectors advice on who they should target for their upcoming fantasy league drafts.

Topps' venture into fantasy league football's "Big Data" realm was a no-brainer for the company. Market research firm Ipso estimates that sports fans spend nearly $800 million per year in fantasy sports media products and services, with 71 percent of that coming from football, as opposed to other sports like baseball and basketball.

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Add to that indirect expenses like DirecTV's NFL Sunday Ticket or NFL's RedZone and the total market revenue can balloon up to $5 billion per year, according to Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

"Participation in fantasy football is enormous and continues to grow annually," said Marc Stephens, Marketing Manager at Topps. "This is a great way to reach new audiences and make sure our product stays relevant amongst NFL fans."

With football fans spending so much money pretending to be Jerry Jones or Bill Belichick, the league realized the growth potential in partnering up with the card collection company.

"Card collectors are obviously passionate sports fans, so our relationship with Topps helps reach more of this audience and differentiate from our competitors" say Director of Integrated Sales, NFL Ben Gaedy.

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