Swedish retailer Stadium is closing another store in the south of the country. An increase in the cost of rent is said to be the reason.
Rising rental costs have long been a challenge for sports stores. After Stadium closed a large store in a shopping center in Borås in the southwest of Sweden this summer, it will close another store on March 1.
It is the city store in Karlskrona, a coastal town in the southeastern part of Sweden that will now lose its Stadium store. The reason, as Stadium has communicated, is that it has not agreed with the landlord on an impending rent increase. According to Stadium, it was “a shock increase” compared to the rent level the store currently has.
“It’s sad. We care about the city trade and would like to come back,” says Johan Reberg, Contract Manager at Stadium, to the local newspaper Sydöstran. “After the end of March, there will only be Stadium Outlet left in Karlskrona.”
For almost a decade now, several of Sweden’s sports chains have been struggling to pay rents across the country, which they say have been raised far too much, especially in city centers. Stadium, Intersport and XXL, for example, have been forced to let go of several city locations in Stockholm and on the west coast.
The Swedish sports market continues to struggle, with a recent survey showing that turnover for sports retailers in the country fell for the third consecutive year in 2024.
