Sports Direct bids to keep stores open during coronavirus crisis

The retailer’s parent company, Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group, said Sports Direct and its stablemate Evans Cycles offered vital products and services that would help people to “maintain a healthy lifestyle” while they are confined to their homes.

Prime minister Boris Johnson said in his address to the nation last night that all retailers selling non-essential products were to be closed for at least three weeks. People can leave their homes to shop for essential products, such as food, and to exercise once a day.

Frasers Group is attempting to secure classification as a retailer of essential products, but will close its stores to the public until it gets the green light from the government that it can open. 

Frasers wrote to all its staff just 30 minutes after Johnson’s speech. In the email, seen by the Press Association, Frasers chief finance officer Chris Wootton said: “We stock a huge range of sports equipment designed for exercising at home… indeed, home fitness is the number-one trending topic on social media after coronavirus itself.

“Against the backdrop of the closure of gyms, the demand for these types of products has increased exponentially as the population looks to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

“Consequently, we are uniquely well placed to help keep the UK as fit and healthy as possible during this crisis and thus our Sports Direct and Evans Cycles stores will remain open where possible to allow us to do this (in accordance with the government’s current social distancing guidance).

“There is no one else that has the range of product and range of stores to make this reasonably accessible for the whole population.”

However, Wootton said this morning that Sports Direct and Evans stores would not open to the public “until we are given the go-ahead by the government” to do so. He said Frasers Group was contacting the government “at all levels, including attempting to get confirmation from the prime minister”.

Sports Direct’s main high street rival, JD Sports, said this morning that all of its stores have now closed, but it would continue to trade online during the pandemic.

Their contrasting approaches came after prime minister Boris Johnson said people should work from home where possible and that only essential journeys should be made by key workers, including those employed by the NHS, in key public services, in local and national government or by food retailers.