The fourth and perhaps last game of the 2026 World Series game is being played October 27th and since the Scam of the day is always posted the night before its scheduled date, it is possible that the World Series may well be over when you read this. Regardless of whether the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays win the World Series there will be a great interest in World Series merchandise for this historic matchup including shirts, caps and more. While there are legitimate sellers of these items, scammers have also sprung into action and have set up websites offering the merchandise at bargain prices. Of course these bargain prices are no bargain because after you order the merchandise online, the merchandise never comes. While it is relatively easy to examine merchandise when you purchase it at a brick and mortar store for the substandard quality of counterfeit merchandise as shown by low quality fabrics, loose stitching and off-center logos, you can never be sure when you buy sports merchandise online as to whether it is legitimate or not.
TIPS
If an offer sounds too good to be true, it usually is. You may wish to restrict your shopping to well-known, legitimate retailers and even then, make sure you are actually on their websites and not that of a scammer. One way you can confirm if a website is legitimate is to use Whois.com which is a free service that will tell you who owns a particular URL and how long it has been in service. If your MLB website has only been around six months and is owned by someone in Nigeria, it certainly is a scam. Here is a link to Whois https://whois.domaintools.com/
Even when shopping on a website that you are sure is legitimate, it is important to remember that while your liability for fraudulent use of your credit card is limited by federal law to no more than $50, your liability for fraudulent use of your debit card which is tied to your bank account is unlimited if you do not promptly discover and report the fraud so always use your credit card for shopping whether you are shopping online or offline.
BrandShield, an AI powered digital risk protection company that helps brands find and remove online threats such as counterfeit products and websites reminds you that merely seeing the word “official” in a web address doesn’t mean that the website is official and suggests you go directly either to the MLB official shop or the real websites for the two teams to purchase truly official merchandise. They also warn about links in fan pages that direct you to a payment page that requests a payment through WhatsApp or another messaging app as this is a red flag that it is a scam.
As an aside, if you really want a great collectible, remember that the World Series winning team T shirts are made up before the end of the series. As a Boston Red Sox fan, I still have my 1986 World Series Champion T shirt from the year that they lost to the NY Mets. These losing team T shirts can be hard to find.
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