Frasers Group has filed an offer to buy Footasylum, according to The Sunday Times. It has notified the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which again ruled in November that JD Sports Fashion must divest the 65-store chain on anti-trust grounds. JD acquired Footasylum in May 2019. Frasers’ bid is questionable, in our opion, if the report is true. With sales of £1,968 million in 2020 in the U.K., according to our own estimates, Frasers’ Sports Direct chain was only slightly smaller last year than JD Sports Fashion with sales of £2,125 million at retail in the country through JD Sports and other sports and outdoor retail chains in the country. Footasylum’s sports fashion format is, however, more similar to that of JD than that of Sports Direct. Together, the two groups control an estimated 60 percent of the British sporting goods market, based on our definition of market size.

Topics