The National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA), a member of the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC), has been following the longstanding antitrust litigation over Visa and Mastercard’s credit card “swipe” fee practices.
NSGA’s most recent Shopper Playbook Study overwhelmingly showed sporting goods customers preferred shopping at stores and websites offering multiple brands over those offering one single brand across the major categories of apparel, equipment and footwear.
National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) members can offset 2026 shipping rate increases by using the PartnerShip program.
The overall sentiment from the retail holiday forecasts released thus far is slight growth expected for the upcoming season with the largest gains still being driven by e-commerce.
NSGA, consistent with its 2023 position, filed a 2025 statement with the FTC supporting a ban on noncompetes indicating that these anticompetitive agreements are harmful to growth of businesses while causing economic harm to valued members of the sporting goods industry.
According to the US Census Bureau’s Monthly Retail Trade Report, sales for sporting goods stores during the month of July reached $5.08 billion, representing no change (+0.1%) compared to the prior year.
The Class of 2026 of the Sporting Goods Industry Hall of Fame includes
Sam Barcelona Jr. (Barcelona Sporting Goods), Tim Boyle (Columbia Sportswear), Mort Finkelstein (MC Sporting Goods) and Scott Hedrick (Pro Athlete, Inc.).
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Monthly Retail Trade Report, sales for sporting goods stores during the month of June reached $4.96 billion, representing a decrease of 5.7 percent compared to the prior year.
The National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) made a change to its Board of Directors with the appointment of John Davenport of Winmark Corporation/Play It Again Sports.
The National Ski & Snowboard Retailers Association (NSSRA) named Stefan Hausberger of Zimmermanns Skis Boards & More (Nashua, New Hampshire) the new NSSRA Vice Chair as Jon Morrill of Kittery Trading Post (Kittery, Maine) retires and leaves the NSSRA Board of Directors. Morrill was previously the Vice Chair.