sportstyle

40 • July/August 2022 sportstyle • sportstylemag.com e sports and fitness market exhibits unique growth trends. By Mike May TEAM SPORTS / TRENDS W hat a long, strange trip the past year has been for the world of team sports. Despite the impact of COVID-19 – or perhaps because of – the sporting goods industry experienced record-breaking sales in 2021, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association's (SFIA) 2022 Manufacturers' Sales by Category Report. e report tracks U.S. wholesale revenues of sports and fitness goods in more than 30 categories and provides comparisons to revenues from previous years. is latest SFIA study reveals that the sports and fitness products industry wholesale sales were $111.7 billion in 2021 – a 16.4 percent rate of growth over 2019 when wholesale industry sales were $95.9 billion. e SFIA report is broken down into five categories, all of which experienced a sales increase. 1. Sporting goods equipment, which ranges from archery to water sports, totaled $30.8 billion (up 16.8 percent from 2019). 2. Fitness equipment, which amounted to $7.9 billion (up 42.2 percent from 2019). 3. Sports apparel, which was $42.3 billion (up 12.2 percent from 2019). 4. Athletic footwear, which reached $19.9 billion (up 15.5 percent from 2019). 5. Licensed products, which were $10.8 billion (up 18.5 percent from 2019). The total market for sports equipment, exercise equipment, athletic footwear, sports apparel and licensed merchandise saw a 15.8 percent increase in revenue from 2020 and a 16.4 percent increase since the 2019 pre-pan- demic numbers, with a majority of the tracked categories experiencing growth of more than 10 percent in those two years. "ese numbers are extraordinary — the largest jump SFIA has seen in the history of us tracking this data," says Tom Cove, president and CEO of SFIA. "Even with the numerous supply chain issues and a myriad of challenges manufacturers have experienced because of the pandemic, these sales figures clearly show the sports and fitness industry is thriving. "When Americans were restricted from schools, facilities and group gatherings, they still wanted to be physically active and they purchased our products for this purpose," adds Cove. "As pandemic restrictions lessened, Americans continued to buy active lifestyle products, showing how central the sports and fitness industry is to Americans' well-being. "With team sports participation approaching pre-pandemic levels, we are optimistic the positive market indicators will sustain." In the all-important team sports equipment, part of the overall sporting goods equipment category, the numbers are equally impressive. • e largest division of team sports equipment is baseball/soball, which remains largely unchanged from where sales were in 2019 ($687.3 million) versus 2021 ($686.2 million). • e second, third, fourth and fih largest team sports equipment categories in this SFIA study are football, basketball, soccer and ice hockey, respectively. • Football had $621.9 million in sales, up 8.4 percent over 2019. • Basketball equipment sales grew 26.6 percent in 2021 to $573.9 million. • Soccer equipment sales have grown every year since 2016, except for 2020, reaching $424.9 million in 2021. • Ice hockey equipment sales fell 1.4 percent in 2021 to $274.9 million. • e other team sports-specific categories tracked in this study are lacrosse and vol- leyball. e lacrosse category had sales of $94.2 million and volleyball, $88 million. Uniforms Business Looks Good A subset of the $36.6 billion sports apparel category is team uniforms, specifically uniforms for baseball, basketball, football, soccer and volleyball. In 2021, wholesale sales of team uniform were $1.4 billion. Baseball, driven by strong participation in youth baseball (local recreation leagues and travel teams) and high school baseball, had uniform sales of $469.3 million. With the exception of 2020, wholesale sales of baseball uniforms have increased every year since 2016. e second largest team sports uniform category is football, with $335.7 million in sales. Basketball uniforms came in third at $294.4 million. Soccer and volleyball round out the top five at $157.0 million and $72.5 million, respectively. n BREAKING RECORDS IN A PANDEMIC

• Cover