On Nov. 24, as planned, Sprinter opened its 203rd Spanish store, a 900-sqm affair at the Plaza Norte 2 mall in San Sebastián de los Reyes, on the outskirts of Madrid. As Diffusion Sport reports, this will not be the last new store of 2022. The company expects to open two more – in Nigrán (Vigo) and Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona) – before the year is out, and next year it hopes to raise the total to 220.
“We expect to maintain a continual expansion,” retail director César Cuadrillero told Diffusion Sport. “Continual would seem to mean following a normal line, but I think our expansion has, in fact, been very aggressive. Aside from the Covid years, with their general business blackout, we’ve been opening 15 to 20 stores a year on average. So for the coming year, we’d like to work with that same figure in mind.” The banner is scoping out the Netherlands and Portugal but will consider any market that shows potential over the next several months.
Though he did not detail the financials, Cuadrillero believes the company’s growth has good fundamentals beneath it. “We are where we wanted to be,” he said. Also, there has been a reversion to team sports since the end of government lockdown measures, which set a premium on individual sports. The World Cup, moreover, has inspired a resurgence in football, although running, fitness, and other such categories are also doing well.
Sprinter operates in Spain through the Iberian Sports Retail Group (ISRG), in which JD Sports and Sonae hold stakes.
