SPORT 2000 enters Poland: Margit Gosau on the expansion strategy

Poland is SPORT 2000 International’s 17th market – and with active discussions spanning the Gulf, the UK and South America, it reads as a milestone in a long march rather than a final destination.

Poland’s GDP grew 3.6 percent in 2025 – faster than Germany, France or Spain. Its e-commerce market now reaches nearly two-thirds of the population. Its urban consumers under 35 are brand-literate, digitally native and spending more. So when SPORT 2000 International announces Poland as its new market, the question is not why they went there. The question is when other retail brands will follow.

The Germany-based retail service organization, the world’s second-largest trading group for independent sporting goods retailers with 2,930 stores and €4.9 billion in total sales in 2024, entered Poland in January 2026 through a licensing agreement with Warsaw-based Savio Group. The deal creates a new national entity – SPORT 2000 Poland – responsible for rolling out the brand through company-owned stores, a franchise network and an online business under sport2000.pl.

But the move carries implications that go well beyond one new flag on the map.

Why Poland, why now

The timing reflects a broader reassessment of intra-European growth. As global trade friction mounts - US tariff pressures, China competition, supply chain fragility - the EU’s own internal market is drawing renewed strategic attention. The Draghi Report on European competitiveness, published in September 2024 and now the reference framework for EU economic policy, identified the single market as the first priority for European economic resilience, with removing internal barriers as the core task. For consumer-facing businesses, the implication is clear: untapped purchasing power sits closer to home than many have acknowledged.

Poland has become a primary example. Now the sixth-largest economy in the EU by nominal GDP, the country crossed the $1 trillion mark in 2025 and is forecast to expand by 3.7 percent in 2026, according to ING economic projections – a rate that outpaces most of Western Europe. Private consumption rose 3.7 percent in 2025, driven by strong wage growth and an unemployment rate below 3 percent, one of the lowest in the bloc.

Margit Gosau, CEO of SPORT 2000 International, says the decision was rooted in precisely these structural signals. “Poland is a competitive and well-developed sporting goods market with strong local players,” she explains.

“We see that as a sign of structural maturity and long-term potential. Poland clearly fulfills the criteria we apply: entrepreneurial strength, governance alignment and sustainable growth prospects.”

The country’s demographic profile adds commercial weight to the macroeconomic picture. Poland has a large and relatively young urban population, and according to Gosau, it has a consumer base that “consumes sports, lifestyle and brands very consciously.” With 60 to 70 percent of sporting goods sales generated online by her estimate, the Polish market is also one of Europe’s most digitally advanced for the category – a structural reality she describes not as optional but as “a structural requirement” for any brand entering with credibility.

That digital intensity matters. According to Euromonitor data, apparel and footwear in Poland saw a rebound in retail volume sales during 2024, with market consolidation accelerating around established brands that can navigate both digital and physical channels simultaneously. Well-known foreign brands, the data suggests, outperformed smaller local competitors in 2024 – a trend that favors exactly the kind of internationally recognized retail format SPORT 2000 brings.

Strategic partnership over direct investment

The operational architecture of the Poland launch reflects the competitive context Gosau describes. Rather than a direct-investment approach, SPORT 2000 International is partnering with the Savio Group – a family-run retail operator with presence in the Polish sports and lifestyle market since 2008, headquartered across Warsaw and Rzeszów, and recognized as one of the country’s fastest-growing specialty retailers.

Lena Chicuk, owner of the Savio Group, frames the deal as a benchmark-setting exercise: “Our goal is to make SPORT 2000 visible in prime locations and online, as well as to set new benchmarks in the Polish sporting goods retail industry.”

The footprint plan is ambitious in format scale. The Savio Group envisions a flagship store of approximately 1,000 to 1,400 square meters, alongside several medium-sized stores of 600 to 700 square meters each. A broader franchise network will follow. The physical store strategy is deliberate: Gosau notes that Polish shopping centers function as social and experiential hubs for younger consumers, making brick-and-mortar retail highly relevant even in a market where a majority of sporting goods transactions begin or end online.

The initial rollout is anchored in SPORT 2000’s Multi-Category Retailer (MCR) format – what the group markets as its “Home of Experts” model, combining curated assortments with professional service standards and community engagement. Gosau positions this not as a volume play but a differentiation strategy: “In a market with well-established incumbents, differentiation must go beyond price and scale.”

What it signals for the wider industry

For sporting goods brands and retailers watching the Central and Eastern European corridor, SPORT 2000’s Poland entry is a data point in a larger structural argument. The region’s consumer markets have been structurally underrepresented in international expansion strategies for years – partly due to lower per-capita income levels relative to Western Europe, partly due to logistics and governance complexity.

Both barriers are eroding. Polish GDP per capita, while still below Western European averages, has more than doubled since 2005 in purchasing power terms, according to the OECD. EU-funded investment flows under the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) are accelerating in 2026, adding tailwinds to household consumption and infrastructure development. The market is consolidating around professionalized retail operators – exactly the condition SPORT 2000 has identified as its structural entry signal.

Dieter Schott, Commercial Director of SPORT 2000 International, confirms the organization sees Poland as a “reference market” – not a one-off addition but the opening of a new growth stage. The pipeline extends well beyond Central Europe: Gosau says structured discussions are underway across the UK, Ireland, the Balkan region, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and selected South American markets.

“International expansion remains one of our core strategic pillars, and further developments are actively being prepared,” she says.

For the sporting goods industry more broadly, the message is worth internalizing. As Western European consumer markets slow, as trade tensions complicate Asia-dependent growth models, and as the EU pushes harder on completing its internal single market, the regions that offer structural consumer growth, governance stability and omnichannel readiness are increasingly the ones that reward first movers. Poland, at this moment, checks all three boxes.