Decathlon Moves to Take Half of Rival Sport 2000, Chasing the French Slopes It Never Conquered

Decathlon, the world's largest sporting-goods retailer, has struck at the one part of the French market it has never managed to dominate: the mountains. On Monday, the Lille-based group announced it had signed a letter of intent to acquire 50% of Sport 2000 France, the central purchasing and franchise arm of rival retail group Céraclès Coopérative — a deal aimed squarely at ski resorts and rural towns where Decathlon's blue-and-white boxes are conspicuously absent.

The deal

Under the agreement, Decathlon would not buy Sport 2000's stores themselves. Those roughly 400 outlets, run by independent merchants under a franchise and cooperative model, would keep operating under their own banner. Instead, Decathlon's stake would sit in the central structure that handles Sport 2000's purchasing, product range, logistics and marketing — the commercial engine behind the network.

Jérémy Angelard, Decathlon's chief business officer for Europe, framed the tie-up as a way to grow beyond the retailer's own four walls, saying the company wants to expand its footprint not just in products but in services, an area he said Decathlon hasn't scaled as quickly as it would like.

Financial terms were not disclosed. The companies expect the transaction to close sometime in 2027, pending clearance from France's competition authority, the Autorité de la concurrence.

Why the mountains matter

The strategic logic is a matter of simple geography. Mountain sports — snowsports and hiking gear together — make up around a quarter of Decathlon's business in France, yet the retailer operates just five stores in the mountains. Sport 2000, by contrast, has roughly 190 stores across the Alps and Pyrenees, giving Decathlon a way to put its own products on shelves in resort towns it has struggled to reach on its own.

The tie-up would also open a door Decathlon has largely stayed outside of: ski and equipment rental, long one of Sport 2000's specialties, plus access to sister chains inside the Céraclès stable, including the cycling repair and retail brand Mondovélo, along with outfits such as Espace Montagne, Ekosport-Rent, WAS We Are Select, S2 Sneakers Specialist and Urban Soccer. Altogether, Céraclès operates about 700 stores in France, compared with Decathlon's 325.

A market already being redrawn

The move lands in a French sporting-goods sector that has been consolidating fast. In 2023, rival cooperative Intersport absorbed the bankrupt Go Sport chain out of receivership for €35 million, in partnership with Qatar's Al-Mana group, adding 72 stores and pushing Intersport's French turnover into the same league as Decathlon's. That deal made Intersport the clear number two in French sports retail, a position it has since reinforced by folding its Spanish and Portuguese operations under French management, building a combined footprint of more than 1,300 stores across four countries.

Against that backdrop, a Decathlon-Sport 2000 alliance would be a defensive move as much as an offensive one — foreclosing the possibility that Intersport, or another consolidator, might have gotten there first. It would also mark an unusual step for Decathlon, which has built its dominance largely on its own vertically integrated brands and company-owned stores rather than partnerships with competitors.

Uneven footing between the partners

The two companies are not entering the tie-up as equals. Céraclès posted €788 million in sales across its 732 stores in 2025 — a 5% decline from the year before despite opening 30 new locations — and expects another dip in 2026, even as it targets 1,000 stores by 2030. Decathlon France, by comparison, generated close to €4 billion in revenue over the same period, part of the €16.8 billion ($19.5 billion) in sales the group posted globally across 82 countries last year.

That gap gives Decathlon considerable leverage in how the partnership eventually takes shape, even as Sport 2000's storefronts keep their own name and independent ownership on paper.

What happens next

The deal must still clear French antitrust review, a process the companies expect to stretch into 2027 given the scale of both networks. If approved, shoppers in ski towns and rural areas could start seeing Decathlon-branded products on Sport 2000 shelves, alongside expanded joint efforts in e-commerce and services such as ski rental and bike repair. For now, the letter of intent leaves plenty still to be negotiated — including a purchase price neither side has disclosed.