Holiday Season Retail Results Reveal Growth in Line with Expectations 

By Nick Rigitano
NSGA Director of Insights and Analysis

DOWNERS GROVE, ILLINOIS (January 16, 2025) – With another holiday season come and gone, the National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) has been keeping note of the holiday sales results released by multiple organizations. The overall sentiment from the retail holiday results is modest growth for this past season in line with forecast expectations and inflation. 

Mastercard reported US retail sales grew 3.8 percent this holiday season (Nov. 1 – Dec. 24), according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures overall retail sales across all payment types. The results were slightly higher than the 3.2 percent forecasted by Mastercard. Online retail sales were up 6.7 percent year over year, while in-store sales were up 2.9 percent. Mastercard noted even though online spending is increasing at a faster pace than in-store, shopping in-store still makes up a considerably larger portion of total retail spending. 

The National Retail Federation (NRF) recently announced retail sales grew strongly in December, completing a strong holiday shopping season, according to the CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor, powered by Affinity Solutions. The Retail Monitor calculation of core retail sales – excluding restaurants in addition to autos and gas – showed an increase of 8.41 percent year over year in December, compared with an increase of 1.43 percent year over year in November.

The numbers reflect the fact that the Sunday after Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday both fell in December rather than November because of the later-than-usual Thanksgiving in 2024, likely giving a meaningful boost to December. The results follow NRF’s forecasts that 2024 retail sales for the full year and 2024 holiday retail sales during November and December – excluding autos, gas and restaurants – would both increase between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023. 

Additional information on holiday results:

Click here for Mastercard Results.

Click here for NRF Results.