There was a time when buying trainers, a tracksuit or the latest football shirt in Britain meant choosing between far more than the handful of major retailers that dominate sports retail today.
Throughout the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, British high streets and shopping centres were filled with competing sports shops. JJB Sports, Sports Division, Olympus, First Sport and Allsports became familiar national names, alongside regional chains and independent retailers serving communities across the country.
For anyone who grew up during the period, many of these names remain instantly recognisable. Yet their disappearance tells a much bigger story about how British sports retail changed, and how trainers and sportswear moved from the playing field into everyday culture.
Some of Britain’s best-known sports retailers grew from remarkably modest beginnings.
Scottish entrepreneur Tom Hunter started selling trainers from the back of a van before building Sports Division into one of Britain’s largest sports retailers. By the 1990s, its stores had become a familiar presence across the country before JJB Sports acquired the company in 1998.
JJB had its own unlikely beginnings.
Dave Whelan bought a small Wigan sporting goods business in 1971 and gradually developed JJB Sports into a high-street giant. As the company expanded, its large stores offered everything from football boots and replica shirts to trainers, tracksuits, golf equipment and traditional sporting goods.
For many families, these weren’t fashion boutiques. They were simply where you went when you needed something for sport.
But the meaning of sportswear was beginning to change.
During the late 1970s and 1980s, young British consumers increasingly began looking at sportswear differently.
Football casual culture played an important part in that shift. European trainers and sportswear began appearing away from the pitch, while brands including adidas, Fila, Sergio Tacchini, Ellesse and Lacoste acquired meanings that extended far beyond their original sporting purpose.
Trainers were no longer simply something you exercised in.
What you wore increasingly said something about taste, identity and which cultural world you belonged to.
That change created opportunities for a different type of retailer.
Liverpool’s Wade Smith became particularly influential after opening in 1982. Founder Robert Wade-Smith recognised that young men were increasingly buying trainers and sportswear because of style rather than purely sporting performance.
The shop became a destination, helping demonstrate how powerful the relationship between sport, music, football and fashion was becoming.
Cobra Sports was another early specialist. Founded in 1979, the retailer developed from a specialist sports-footwear business into a substantial chain, eventually reaching around 85 UK stores by 1997.
For customers who remember it, Cobra became particularly associated with an extensive footwear selection, including products that weren’t always easy to find elsewhere.
The national chains only tell part of the story.
Regional retailers were equally important.
Gilesports developed a significant presence across Wales, the South West and Midlands, while countless smaller independent shops served individual towns and communities.
INTERSPORT followed another model entirely, bringing independent sports retailers together through an international network rather than building one conventional centrally owned British chain.
In Torquay, a small sports shop opened by Norman Lake and his sons in 1981 would eventually take a very different path.
Torre Sports developed a mail-order operation during the 1990s before launching Pro:Direct Soccer in 1998. Instead of disappearing with much of the traditional sports-retail landscape, the business successfully moved into specialist distance selling and later online retail.
Looking back, the variety was remarkable.
One town might have JJB and Allsports alongside an independent football shop. Another might have Sports Division, First Sport or Olympus. Larger cities could offer specialist trainer shops alongside traditional sports retailers.
And each could have a slightly different identity.
By the 1990s, the distinction between sports shop and fashion shop was becoming increasingly difficult to define.
Replica football shirts had become major consumer products. Basketball footwear was influencing trainer culture. Nike Air Max had moved far beyond running. adidas archive styles were finding new audiences, while tracksuits and technical sportswear were increasingly worn as everyday clothing.
Retailers had to decide what kind of sports shop they wanted to become.
JD Sports proved particularly effective at understanding where the market was heading.
Founded in 1981 by John Wardle and David Makin, JD gradually developed a proposition increasingly focused on the relationship between trainers, branded sportswear, youth culture and fashion.
Rather than treating sportswear purely as equipment, the retailer understood that the trainer itself had become a desirable product.
That distinction would become increasingly important.
