Sports Direct International has added one more country to the roster of its retail properties outside the UK by acquiring four stores in the Netherlands from Primo, a discount-oriented Belgian sports retailer. So far Sports Direct only had foreign retail interests in Ireland, Belgium and Slovenia.
The stores are expected to be rebranded as Sports Direct, since the Sports World banner, which Mike Ashley continues to use in Belgium, was registered in the Netherlands by Inge van Kemenade for her own four sports megastores in the country. Lawyers for the Dutch Sports World approached Ashley’s office to clarify the legal situation last year. Although the Dutch company declined to confirm the outcome of the talks, the change of the British group’s name from Sports World to Sports Direct ahead of its flotation on the London Stock Exchange might indicate that Van Kemenade had a strong case.
The official line from Sports Direct is that the company chose this name because it could not use the Sports World name for its own website, due to the fact that that the domain had already been registered by certain interests in the USA.
Sports Direct has already been growing rapidly in neighboring Belgium with 31 stores and another 6 openings planned in the short term. The company reached sales of about €90 million lthere ast year, up by 25 percent, with a double-digit increase in comparable sales. The company’s management estimates the potential of Sports Direct in Belgium at about 45 stores in the next couple of years.
Just like their British counterparts, the Belgian stores sell large assortments of brands owned by Sports Direct. However, they have a somewhat less discount-oriented approach and a more specialist profile, selling also bicycles and outdoor accessories which do not appear in Sports Direct’s British stores. It’s for this reason that Sports Direct’s Belgian arm secured the rights as exclusive buyer for Sport 2000 in Belgium, giving it access to wider ranges of technical products.
