Mike Ashley’s Sports Direct might be king of the sportswear market, but it will never be the “Selfridges of sport” — at least according to a damning verdict by Berenberg analysts, who initiated coverage of the retailer with a “sell” recommendation yesterday, sending shares in the retailer down by almost 12 per cent.
Sports Direct dominates the British sportswear market. It reinforced its hold after JJB Sports went bust in 2012 and by 2014 it had double the market share of the second-placed JD Sports Fashion. Since then, though, the analysts said that it had lost market share while JD Sports had moved to close the gap.
Yet the analysts suggested that Amazon, the second-most-visited online British sports retailer, posed the greatest risk to Sports Direct, noting that the company had spent £570 million on freehold property in the past three years but offered the weakest online proposition.
