Sports Authority

Gart Brothers, or Gart Bros. began in 1928, when Denver Post newspaper carrier Nathan Gart started the company with $50 (~$852.00 in 2022) in fishing rod samples.

In 1971, the Gart Bros. Company opened the "Sportscastle" superstore in Denver, Colorado, at the corner of 10th Avenue and Broadway. The 1980s marked a period of substantial growth for the company through a series of acquisitions. These mergers included Hagan's Sports Ltd. (1987) and Stevens Brown of Salt Lake City (1987). In the fall of 1992, Leonard Green & Partners acquired Thrifty and became the company's largest shareholder.

At the same time that Gart Bros. opened the Sportscastle, the Hochberg family and the Cantor family opened their first Sportmart in Niles, Illinois. The company grew to 60 stores in nine states. Gart Bros. and Sportmart merged in 1998. Sportmart briefly operated in Canada in the 1990s before closing down their operations after two years.

Oshman's Sporting Goods was founded in Houston, Texas, in 1919 by Jake Oshman. By 1965, Oshman's had become the largest sporting goods chain in Texas, operating 43 Oshman's SuperSports USA stores and 15 traditional stores; the company merged with Gart Bros. in 2001, two years before eventually merging with and changing their name to Sports Authority.

Interior of a Sports Authority in Daly City, California

The Sports Authority, Inc., was founded in Lakes Mall in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, by a syndicate of venture capital groups and several key founding executives. Jack A. Smith, formerly COO of Herman's World of Sporting Goods, CEO; Roy M. Cohen, senior vice president and general merchandise manager; Richard Lynch, senior vice president and CFO and Arnold Sedel, vice president of stores operations, were the founding executives. The venture capital syndicate was led by William Blair Venture Partners and included First Chicago Venture Partners, Bain Capital, Phillips-Smith Venture Partners, Marquette Venture Partners, and Bessemer Securities.

The Sports Authority, Inc. opened its first store in November 1987 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 1990, Kmart acquired the company.[7] At the time of acquisition, Kmart had opened two sporting goods stores in Metro Detroit under the Sports Giant name and converted these stores to the Sports Authority name.[8] Five years later, The Sports Authority had expanded to 136 stores in 26 states, and was spun off from parent Kmart.

Its headquarters were in Lauderdale Lakes,[9][10] near Fort Lauderdale.[11]

Gart Sports, which also operated Oshman's and Sportmart, completed a "merger of equals" with The Sports Authority on August 4, 2003. At the time of its merger with the Gart Sports Company, The Sports Authority was the largest full-line sporting goods retailer in the United States, and had 205 stores in 33 states. The combined company took the Sports Authority name. With the merger, each share of Sports Authority was exchanged with 0.37 shares of Gart Sports which gave investors in each about 50% of the new merchant. The new company was based in Englewood, Colorado, which was the home of Gart Sports.

As of May 2006, the remaining stores that were not operating under the Sports Authority name were re-branded to the Sports Authority name.

In January 2006, Sports Authority agreed to be purchased in a leveraged buyout by affiliates of Leonard Green & Partners, a private equity investment firm, in a transaction valued at $1.4 billion (~$1.84 billion in 2021).[12] Shareholders approved the deal in May 2006. Upon completion of the merger, Sports Authority ceased to be a publicly listed stock. There were also no public bonds outstanding, and Sports Authority no longer filed financial statements with the SEC.

In August 2006, Copeland's Sports, headquartered in San Luis Obispo, California filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and on November 17, 2006, Sports Authority, through a wholly owned subsidiary, assumed the leasehold interests in seven former Copeland's Sports retail store locations.

Sports Authority launched new store brand "S.A. Elite" in mid-2010, based on consumer research and testing. These stores are smaller than typical Sports Authority outlets and carry high-end sports apparel and accessories.[13][14]