Sports Direct International is planning to open a 1,400-square-meter Sports Direct store in a shopping center in Riga. It will be its first one by this name in Latvia, where it already has a presence through Sportland International, the Baltic sports retailer acquired in 2013. Meanwhile, according to the Austrian daily Die Presse, Sports Direct plans to rename up to ten former Sport Eybl stores in the country Lillywhites, using the name of its big store on London's Piccadilly Circus to position them again in a higher segment of the market. After its takeover of Sport Eybl & Sports Experts in mid-2013, all the stores had been converted to the Sports Direct banner and filled with aggressively priced merchandise, leading suppliers like Mammut to stop working with the Austrian retail group. Four stores were then returned to the Sport Eybl banner last autumn.

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