The Sports Market Is Getting Harder to Read

When I worked at Nike, most conversations started with the consumer. Not the product. Not the campaign. Not the marketing plan. The consumer.

That is why I wanted to start my conversation with Matt Powell there too.

Matt is one of the most respected voices in the sports and footwear industry. He spent many years at The NPD Group as VP and senior industry advisor for sports, and today runs Spurwink River and serves as a senior advisor at BCE Consulting.

In our conversation, we talked about what is changing across the sports market. The end of hype-driven sneaker culture. The rise of smaller brands. The limits of DTC. Retail consolidation. Running as both performance and fashion. And what all of this means for brands trying to grow.

The clearest takeaway for me was this. The market is not becoming smaller. It is becoming more fragmented, more curated, and less forgiving.

Growth may be returning to more normal levels. But underneath that stability, the structure of the category is changing.

Scarcity is no longer doing the same work

For many years, sneakers sat at the center of youth culture. Scarcity, resale, drops, and allocation created a very specific kind of energy around the category.

Matt believes that era is shifting.

“The biggest change is we really have started to move on from the drop and hype culture to a more inclusive and accessible fashion world” he said.

He pointed to Adidas Samba and Birkenstock Boston as examples. These were not products pushed from the top down by brands deciding they would become the next big thing. They were already in the market. Then consumers, especially female consumers, started elevating them through social media.

That shift matters.

The industry spent years learning how to control demand. Limit the product. Allocate the pairs. Create scarcity. Let the hype build. But the current market is behaving differently. Energy is coming more from the street up than the brand down.

This does not mean sneakers are over. Matt was clear on that. People still wear sneakers everywhere. But the way sneakers create cultural relevance is changing.

Consumers want uniqueness and smaller brands deliver it faster

One of Matt’s lines that stayed with me was this.

“Younger consumers are still very brand loyal until they’re not.”

That feels simple, but it captures a lot about the current consumer.

Brand loyalty has not disappeared. But it has become more conditional. A young consumer may love a brand because a celebrity wears it, because they saw it on TikTok, or because they understand how to style it. But when another brand gives them a stronger reason to move, they move.

Matt connected this to Gen Z’s desire to feel unique.

Sportswear carries an interesting tension here. Consumers want uniqueness, but they are often still wearing familiar things. Sneakers. Jeans. Hoodies. Performance outerwear. Running shoes. The difference is in the brand, the silhouette, the signal.

This is why it is a good time to be a small brand. Smallness itself can create a sense of uniqueness.

But the thing that gets a brand noticed will not necessarily be the thing that sustains it. On and Hoka both became distinctive through product codes that felt very different. But once those codes become more widely adopted, the brand needs to find the next layer of growth.

Full-price selling is still one of the clearest signs of brand strength

Matt has said before that the product that sells at full price wins. I asked him which brands are still able to do that.

His answer was not only about demand. It was about marketplace discipline.

He called out On and New Balance as examples of brands that have been able to protect price more effectively. The reason is not simply that people want the product. It is that these brands have been careful about supply, distribution, and how quickly they turn through styles.

The conversation turned genuinely useful for founders and brand leaders here.

Discounting is rarely just a pricing issue. It is often a strategy issue, showing up as too much distribution, too little curation, too much product in the wrong places, or too broad a definition of the customer.

A brand can have demand and still damage itself if it does not manage the marketplace carefully.

DTC is important, but it is no longer the whole answer

When I left Nike in 2018, DTC was the dominant industry narrative. The direction felt clear. Reduce dependence on wholesale, build direct relationships, own the consumer, grow digital.

I asked Matt if that is still the case.

He does not believe DTC is still the only dominant story.

He thinks the industry is settling into a more balanced model. DTC remains very important for brand strategy. It is the place where brands can tell the full product story and present the assortment the way they intended.

But it does not replace the role of physical retail.

People still like stores. They like touching and trying products. There is also a social part of shopping that digital cannot fully replace.

At the same time, not every retailer creates value. Matt made an important distinction between retailers that elevate the brand and retailers that are just selling stuff.

A valuable retailer educates the consumer, curates the assortment, and understands exactly who the product is for. That is what creates context.

This is where I think the next retail conversation should go. Not DTC versus wholesale. Not online versus offline. The better question is which channels actually build the brand while selling the product.

The next winners will have a clearer point of view

When I asked Matt where the industry is heading, his answer came back to clarity.

Brands and retailers need a much clearer understanding of who their customer is and what products are right for that customer.

Consumer insight has never been more important.

For years, some of the biggest brands could grow through scale, distribution, allocation, and broad cultural dominance. That world is changing.

Nike can return to growth, but Matt does not think it will necessarily have the same grip on the industry it once had. He also sees brands like Puma needing a clearer ethos and point of view, not just credible products across disconnected categories.

The sports industry is not simply moving from big brands to small brands, or from wholesale to DTC, or from hype to performance. It is moving toward a market where clarity matters more.

Clear consumer understanding.

Clear product role.

Clear marketplace governance.

Clear retail partners.

Clear point of view.

The brands that win will not be the ones chasing every signal. They will be the ones that know which signals matter for them.

That may be the hardest part of brand building now. Not finding more opportunities, but deciding which ones are actually yours.