Barcelona’s verdict: the question is no longer whether retailers deploy AI but whether it pays. With European consumer trust in AI lagging global averages and resale revenue leaking to peer-to-peer platforms, sporting goods brands face the impact gap from both sides.
Shoptalk Europe 2026 closed its three-day run at Fira Gran Via in Barcelona on June 11 with one concept that surfaced repeatedly across sessions: agentic commerce. The event, which drew more than 4,500 senior retail and technology leaders from 62 countries, positioned AI-assisted and fully delegated shopping as a central theme for future commerce, while exposing how few companies can yet prove it pays.
Adoption is racing ahead of impact
The sharpest data point of the week came from Merkle, the customer experience consultancy: in research presented at the event, a survey of 100 enterprises worth over one billion dollars each found that 88 percent have implemented AI in some form, but only six percent can draw a direct line to EBITDA value.
The adoption side of that gulf is accelerating regardless. Zalando said its AI assistant grew from six million users in 2025 to ten million in the first quarter of 2026 alone, with 90 percent of site content now AI-generated, up from near-zero a year earlier.
A trillion-euro horizon
Shoptalk’s own decade-ahead predictions, unveiled on June 11, put numbers on the shift: Merkle’s scenario modeling suggests autonomous agent-to-agent commerce could account for ten to 25 percent of global B2C commerce by 2030: a market shift that could reach €1 trillion in value.
The predictions also flagged GLP-1 weight-loss drugs as a structural demand driver. Roughly one percent of the global population currently takes the appetite suppressants, and Morgan Stanley forecasts uptake could reach roughly ten percent of target populations outside the US by 2035. Wardrobe refreshes are expected, but the impact on sporting goods is less clear, as we have documented on SGIE.
Trust deficit meets discovery-led shopping
Ipsos painted a sober macro picture: European consumer confidence dropped 2.7 points, the second-largest fall since the early days of COVID-19. Ipsos data cited at the event suggests European trust in AI lags global averages.
At the same time, search-first shopping is losing ground. TikTok Shop confirmed its expansion to Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland from June 15, 2026, and Pinterest said 69 percent of Gen Z find visual search more helpful than text when making a purchase.
The sporting goods read
The sector was firmly on stage. Arc’teryx CEO Stuart Haselden took the headline stage to explain how the brand has scaled from technical outerwear into a global cultural phenomenon without abandoning its technical roots. The session was trailed as one of the event’s marquee draws, with executives from Decathlon, JD Sports and Vuori among registered attendees.
Two predictions land squarely on the sector. First, recommerce: McKinsey and the Business of Fashion forecast the global second-hand fashion and luxury market to grow from €168 billion in 2023 to €270 billion in 2027. Nearly 90 percent of resale spend currently flows to peer-to-peer marketplaces rather than brands, a direct challenge to outdoor and sports labels building owned resale programs.
Second, the Startup Pitch awards went to two companies with clear sporting goods relevance: Maeve AI, which tackles fashion returns at the production level after finding poor fit accounts for 70 percent of women’s wear returns, and Reclaim, a circularity platform connecting customers to resale, repair and recycling services.
