Academy Sports + Outdoors is getting ready for World Cup fever and the expected subsequent interest in soccer.
According to Academy’s Matt McCabe, executive vice president and chief merchandising officer, 30 World Cup games are within the retailer’s store footprint, “and they say that each one of those games is like a Super Bowl.”
The outdoor retailer’s chief merchant said the chain said it would have full displays of jerseys, T-shirts, accessories and items in 42 key stores. “W think we’re going to generate some revenue from all the tailgating [events],” he said.
As for shoes, McCabe said the benefit of the World Cup is that the event fosters increases in participation in the sport, “and so we are ramping up our cleat presentation as we get into fall, because we know that once the World Cup ends, a lot of kids are going to want to play, and they’re going to come [into our stores] and they’re going to need cleats.”
That kind of thinking is a reflection of how Academy’s shoe assortment mix has changed over a five-year period.
“We continue to grow our footwear business, particularly in the better and best categories,” McCabe said. “Five or six years ago, we were the place where you buy your pair of running shooters if you were just trying to see if you could run around the block for the first time. And now we still service that customer, but you can also buy shoes from us if you’re trying to run your 10th marathon, and that’s a really cool journey we’ve been on.”
McCabe said that five or six year ago, only 4 percent of shoe sales were over $100, and that now that’s closer to 35 percent. Bringing brands, including Nike, has helped the outdoor retailer grow — its Vomero and Vomero Plus are now important additions to the assortment mix. Also part of the running mix are Brooks’ running shoes, the Adidas EVO SL line and the New Balance 1080s.
While having a growing base of trade-down customers now shopping at Academy Sports has helped to grow sales, the merchandising guru said the growth of the assortment mix means that consumers who used to buy their first running pair from Academy and “graduate somewhere else when they stayed with it [can now] continue to shop with us on their journey.”
While the retailer has set a target of adding on average 25 doors to its store fleet each year, McCabe said there are now two retail store options.
One is the traditional 63,000 to 65,000 square foot store that is in city areas, and the other is smaller at between 50,000 to 55,000 square feet targeting suburbs. The smaller square footage concept targets middle income consumers that are either the outdoor enthusiast who enjoys fishing and/or shooting sports or the sporting family where members participate in multiple sports activities. But the sweet spot for Academy is where the two overlap and do both, what the retailer refers to as the game family, McCabe said.
Academy on Tuesday held its Investor Day presentation for Wall Street analysts. The retailer’s top three goals are to grow new stores, expand its e-commerce business and drive existing comps. Academy wants to get its top line to $8 billion over the next five years, grow the e-commerce business to achieve a 15 percent penetration of total revenue, and deliver a net income margin of 7 percent.
Academy on Tuesday also disclosed preliminary first quarter fiscal 2026 sales and comps, noting that is expects sales for the three-month period to rise 6 percent to 7 percent, with comparable sales up 2 percent to 3 percent.
“The Company plans to communicate any changes to its fiscal 2026 guidance when it reports full first quarter fiscal 2026 financial results in June 2026,” Academy said.
For the full-year ended Jan. 31, 2026, net income fell 9.9 percent to $376.8 million, or $5.54 a diluted share, from $418.4 million, or $5.73, in 2024. Net sales rose 2.0 percent to $6.05 billion from $5.93 billion in the same year-ago period.
Looking ahead, the retailer is also planning to celebrate America’s upcoming 250th birthday celebration in July, as well as continuing to diversify its assortment mix that includes getting in on the Hyrox fitness movement this spring — a Hyrox licensed shoe by Puma — and adding the Havaianas brand of flip-flops to all its doors this summer.
