Sales of the largest sporting goods retailers reached $86,269 million in 2013 against $81,646 million the prior year, an increase of 5.7% in US$ and 6.8% in local currency compared to an impressive 10.2% growth rate in the prior year. Besides a somewhat stronger US$ that mitigated results, there was less of a boost from Emerging Markets this year and growth in Developed Markets remained steady in the mid-single-digit range. While Emerging Market retailers from Brazil, China and Southeast Asia registered a 28.2% growth rate in 2012, that slipped all the way to 6.0% currency adjusted in 2013 on the slowdown in China which represents by far the largest component of this group. The rate in Developed markets also slipped to 6.8% but not as far from the 9.0% rate of 2012.
Our annual rankings of the world’s largest sporting goods specialty retailers focuses on retailers whose primary business is sports products. It does not include general merchandise sales of chains like Wal-Mart, nor do we include buying groups that are especially important in Europe. In many cases, we are able to get public figures, though for private companies we often rely on input from management or develop estimates based on changes in store count and comparable store sales figures of similar retailers. All data is collected in local currency and then translated into US$ for the ranking, based on the average exchange rates from the OECD.