A huge new Sports Direct store is due to open in Birmingham tomorrow (Friday, May 6) after the company quit the Bullring last month. The new store cost more than £10 million and will feature a huge amount of products across four floors as well as an E-sports gaming room.
Sports Direct – owned by Mike Ashley’s Frasers Group – had occupied two levels of space in the Bullring but will now trade from the larger premises in New Street in the city centre. The store will also feature a sports bra fitting service, as well as an Evans Cycles and a Game concession.
The unit covers a massive 60,000 square feet. Sports Direct’s arrival on New Street – almost directly opposite the Odeon Cinema – will be the thoroughfare’s biggest development since H&M opened nearby on March 29, 2018.
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That move came 18 months after the Apple store had left the Bullring to open inside a Grade II listed banking hall turned former Waterstones at the corner of Stephenson Place on September 24, 2016.
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the opening, CEO of Frasers Group Michael Murray said the store was a “huge investment in the High Street”. He added that it had “cost more than £10m” to get up and running.
He also spoke about how the country’s High Streets were not “dead”, but said they would be “different”. He told the BBC: “I believe if you give people a reason to come and shop, they will shop. They’ve just not had a reason for the past few years.”
