# Dick's Sporting Goods recruits CPG and auto brands to advertise inside youth sports retail, building a $500M media network *The retailer is selling its 7.8 million youth athlete families as a premium audience to non-endemic brands.* By **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA, Principal** — The Stash Edge, Hako Shikin LLC. Published 2026-09-10. Canonical: https://www.pops4.com/stash/articles/dicks-sporting-goods-2026-09-10t18-3 Subject: Dick's Sporting Goods Tags: retail media, youth sports, audience bundling, non-endemic advertising, attribution --- Dick's Sporting Goods is pitching CPG brands, quick-service restaurants, and automakers to run ads inside its stores and digital properties, according to Modern Retail. The retailer's advertising division now targets non-endemic brands—companies that don't sell sporting goods—using access to families with youth athletes as the hook. Dick's previously reported its retail media network generated nearly **$500 million** in revenue, and the company is expanding beyond traditional sports suppliers to capture budget from categories that rarely advertise in sporting goods retail. The play works because Dick's owns a captive, high-intent audience. The retailer reported serving **7.8 million** youth athletes through its House of Sport concept and youth sports partnerships. These families visit stores repeatedly for equipment, uniforms, and seasonal gear. That frequency creates consistent exposure for brands selling outside the sports category—energy drinks, family vehicles, fast food—who want to reach parents making household purchase decisions. Modern Retail notes Dick's is positioning this audience as comparable to premium lifestyle media, not commodity retail. The mechanism is audience bundling across owned touchpoints. Dick's runs campaigns in-store on digital screens, on its e-commerce site, and through its youth sports program sponsorships. A QSR brand can run a breakfast promotion on screens near the baseball glove aisle, then retarget the same household online when they browse cleats. An automaker can sponsor a youth soccer league Dick's partners with, gaining brand presence at fields and in post-game emails. The retailer controls the full loop—foot traffic, transaction data, digital engagement—so it can measure whether an in-store cereal ad drives online coupon redemption or a minivan ad correlates with dealership visits. The reason this unlocks budget is attribution. CPG and auto brands traditionally struggle to measure retail advertising because they don't control the point of sale. Dick's offers closed-loop reporting: it knows which households saw the ad, what they bought in-store, and whether they engaged digitally afterward. That lets a brand justify shifting dollars from broad national TV to a targeted retail placement. Modern Retail reports Dick's is emphasizing this measurement advantage in its pitch to non-endemic advertisers, framing youth sports retail as a performance channel, not just brand awareness. A small physical-product brand runs the same play by identifying a retail or community partner with captive, repeat traffic in your category. If you sell hydration products, approach a local gym or youth sports league that already owns frequent touchpoints with your customer. Offer to sponsor their scoreboard, their member newsletter, or a seasonal event in exchange for attribution data—email sign-ups, promo code redemptions, post-event survey responses. Build the creative around a specific offer, not brand awareness, so you can measure the return. Start with a **$500** test: sponsor one tournament, track conversions, then scale to the next venue if the unit economics work. The key is negotiating access to the partner's audience data so you can retarget and measure, not just buying a logo placement. The broader pattern is retail media networks expanding to non-endemic categories as attribution technology matures. Physical-product brands should evaluate whether their retailers offer ad inventory and whether the audience justifies the cost. The edge is in closed-loop measurement: if you can prove a retail ad drove sales, you can pull budget from less accountable channels. ## The takeaway Dick's proves non-endemic brands will pay for access to high-frequency retail audiences when measurement closes the attribution loop. --- ## Publisher **Hako Shikin LLC** — Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded 1997. ASI 217876 · DUNS 18-204-6339. Principal and author: **Jenny Huang Goodman MPA MSc MHSA**. - Author: https://www.huanggoodman.com/about - LLM context: https://www.pops4.com/stash/llms.txt - MCP endpoint, for AI agents: https://mcp.pops4.com/mcp - Client dashboard: https://dashboard.pops4.com/ - Catalogue: 70,000+ products, 200+ brands