It is no surprise that Nike is the most valuable sports business brands worldwide. The Nike brand was valued at close to 30 billion U.S. dollars in 2017, almost double the value of second placed ESPN. Nike was also the leading athletic apparel, accessories and footwear company worldwide based on sales. In 2018, Nike generated approximately 35 billion U.S. dollars in sales. The biggest sporting goods retailer in the U.S. in terms of revenue, however, was Walmart, with 9.8 billion U.S. dollars in revenue from sporting goods sales in 2015.
Retail is one of the main sales channels for sporting goods in the U.S. It is handled by sporting goods retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Bass Pro Shop, The Sports Authority or Academy Sports & Outdoors. In total, sporting goods stores sales in the U.S. exceeded 47 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. One of the most popular sporting goods retailers is Dick's Sporting Goods. Almost a quarter of respondents in a recent Statista survey stated that they had shopped for sporting goods from Dick's Sporting Goods in the last twelve months. Similarly, more than 20 percent of respondents of another Statista survey said that they purchase sports apparel, sports shoes and sports equipment or gear from the company's online site.
Athletic footwear is an integral part of the sporting goods market in the United States, with product sales of approximately 34 billion U.S. dollars in 2017. In 2018, almost 60 percent of Americans, aged between 30 and 49 years, bought athletic shoes. The average selling price for athletic footwear stood at around 58.16 U.S. dollars in 2017. The leading companies in the footwear segment are Nike and Adidas with revenues of 21.1 and 10.4 billion U.S. dollars respectively in 2017.
Nike and Adidas are also the leading sporting goods manufacturers worldwide in terms of revenue. Other major sporting goods manufacturers with at least 1.5 billion U.S. dollars in revenue are VF Corp., Under Armour, Puma, Asics, and Mizuno.
