How Youth Sports Made Dick’s Rich

Sports Authority is gone. Modell's is gone. Dick's Sporting Goods watched both of its biggest competitors collapse — and then quietly built a $17 billion business on what they left behind. *Who else is crushing it in retail and how? We have the answer:* https://clickhubspot.com/w2td When Amazon started undercutting sporting goods chains on price, two of Dick's biggest competitors had nothing left to offer. Dick's made a different bet. It bought Sports Authority's customer list — 25 million email addresses — for $15 million, then used the data it had already been collecting through its loyalty program to figure out which sport your kid played and when their season started. In 2016, it acquired GameChanger, the app millions of youth sports families use for scoring and stats, so it could nudge you to buy right before you needed gear. Then in 2021, it opened House of Sport: locations with batting cages, golf simulators, and climbing walls. Not a store you shop at — a place you keep coming back to. Behind all three moves is a $40B youth sports boom. Dick's didn't just ride it. It built the infrastructure for it. Get the 5-minute newsletter keeping 2M+ innovators in the loop: https://thehustle.co/join-free-2