Except for Sports Direct International (SDI), which performed badly in Austria, international-oriented sports retailers performed relatively well overall, due in part to the opening of new stores. As previously reported, Intersport International, whose core business is in Europe, grew by 5.1 percent to €11.03 billion after VAT in 2015. Sport 2000 International, which trades only in Europe, rose by an estimated 8 percent on a comparable basis, reaching a level of €6.6 billion at retail. Decathlon, which follows a very different business model and is much more spread out globally, raised its sales by 12 percent to €9.1 billion.
As in 2014, XXL, the big low-cost sporting goods retailer based in Norway, grew the most, particularly in relatively new markets like Finland. Decathlon continued to gain market share in all the countries where it has a leading position. JD Sports Fashion was on a roller-coaster that continued into this year, particularly in Spain, where it has its own stores and controls Sprinter. We could not obtain a breakdown for the JD or SDI between their sales in the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland, but we are guessing that JD outperformed SDI, partly because of the growing popularity of sports-inspired sneakers developed by the major sports brands all over Europe.
For the first time, we have added Sprinter in Spain as well as a major new player in Denmark, Sport 24, to our retail charts. Some of the figures reported for individual retailers in our charts are based on public statements or input from the management, but others are just estimates. This applies especially to voluntary groups like Intersport or Sport 2000. New and more accurate information that we have obtained this year has allowed us to restate the figures for companies such as Go Sport, Karstadt and some Swiss sports retailers.
In any case, the figures on the charts published in this issue refer to each retailer's sales in a particular country. We shall soon put out an estimate of the global sports retail market where we shall provide the global turnover of each integrated retail chain.
