European sporting goods retailers recovered by and large from the economic recession in 2010, partly aided by very favorable weather conditions and by the World Cup of football. Offsetting the 2.9 percent decline that we had calculated for 2009, consumer spending on sporting goods rose last year by 4.3 percent in terms of euros in the 15 countries analyzed in the annual retail survey of Sporting Goods Intelligence Europe.

On the basis of constant currencies, the European market increased by 2.6 percent, with an almost equal spurt forward for the eurozone as a whole and for the other countries. On the same basis, the market had been flat in 2008 and down by 1.0 percent in 2009, marking the first decline in a long time.

Separate charts for the countries belonging to the two monetary zones are given on Pages 2 and 3 of this issue. They rank the major retailers in each country and give their actual or estimated turnover figures and the related market shares. All our figures are based on public records or the best possible estimates that we could come up with, after talking to many industry officials. Some figures have been restated based on new and better estimates for 2009.

We decided to drop Sport Point Group in Italy because it has been impossible to obtain any accurate sales estimates for the retailers affiliated with this buying group. For the countries outside the eurozone, the corresponding figures in euros are based on the average exchange rate for the year.

Our estimates for market size differ in some cases from those given by national bodies and market research agencies, some of which exclude sports bicycles, non-commercial fishing or golf products. This is because we use the same definition of the sporting goods market in each country, including all the categories that we cover in our market research reports all over Europe. This allows the reader to compare one market with the other, showing wide differences in per capita consumption, for example.

Outside the eurozone, the continued progress of the Scandinavian bloc was offset last year by the continued difficult conditions of the British market, whose size has been restated on our chart. The U.K. market dropped slightly, while the Italian and Irish markets took a deeper plunge, reflecting the dim macroeconomic background in those countries. In all other countries, sales were flat or on the rise.

Surprisingly, the market was relatively stable in the Iberian Peninsula, where the economic situation continued to be tough, thanks in part to the low-priced offerings of Décathlon, which kept on gaining market share. The timid 1.5 percent increase reported for the Spanish market partly reflected an increase of the same magnitude in the national VAT rate as of July.

The strong 7 percent growth that we are giving here for the German market comes from an authoritative source and is about twice as high as estimated at the beginning of this year. German retail executives were surprised by the strong double-digit increases recorded in the last few months of 2010, which were mainly due to the exceptionally cold weather.

The opposite occurred in the first few months of 2011 in Germany and in several other European countries, however. Considering also the fact there will be no special international sports event this year, the whole European market is unlikely to match the performances of 2010.

As illustrated in the two charts in this issue, the larger retailers have generally outperformed the market in each country at various degrees and with a few exceptions. This has particularly been the case for international retailers and buying groups such as Décathlon, Intersport and Sports Direct International. We wish to point out that the figures given in our charts for the retailers refer only to their sales within a specific country. Where they are marked by an asterisk, you may want to check their total sales in the global retail chart that we are going to publish soon.

After changing our estimates for the U.K. market, we come up with a figure of €52.8 billion for the size of the market in the 15 countries that we are studying regularly. If we add Russia and all the other European countries, we can safely estimate that the whole European market was worth around €60 billion in 2010.

Click HERE for the Retail Chart Part 1 (Euro zone)
Click HERE for the Retail Chart Part 2 (Non-Euro zone)