Forum Sport Brand Guidelines: A 1991 Basauri Sports Chain, Athlete Shareholders & Eroski

Cyclists and a footballer on the share register.

Forum Sport is a Spanish chain of sports stores with its roots in the Basque Country. Cinco Días reported in August 2004 that the company was created in 1991 in Basauri, in Biscay, where it built its original sports store, and that its initial shareholders included the cyclists Miguel Indurain and Marino Lejarreta and the footballer Genar Andrinua. In 2004 the company was still based in Basauri and was chaired by Andrinua, the newspaper said.

The chain moved into the orbit of the Basque retail co-operative Eroski in 1999, according to the same report, after the opening of two Forum Sport centres in Biscay and Gipuzkoa, which began its expansion. By 2004 Eroski held 69.14 per cent of the shares, and a group of 66 athletes from different sports held the rest. That year the company ran 18 Forum Sport stores and 8 stores under a second name, Sportland, spread across Spain. Forum Sport stores measured between 2,000 and 3,000 square metres and Sportland stores between 900 and 1,000 square metres, Cinco Días reported.

Staff were brought into the ownership too. In 2003, according to the same article, about 70 per cent of the workforce, then more than 1,000 people, became shareholders of Gespa de Participaciones Forum, a holding company that, jointly with Eroski, held 4.21 per cent of Forum Sport. The newspaper noted that the co-operative used the same formula for the staff of its hypermarkets outside the Basque Country.

From a Basque base to most of Spain.

Expansion followed through the 2000s. By August 2007, Cinco Días reported, Forum Sport had 43 stores across almost every Spanish region, ranging from 900 to 3,500 square metres. The company was majority-owned by Eroski, with the rest held by a group of prominent athletes, some still competing and some retired. The newspaper quoted the co-operative’s reports as describing a policy of growth and of moving into new areas ahead of short-term results.

By November 2016, Palco23 reported, the chain was present in 10 Spanish regions with 46 stores, two outlets and one franchise, and Eroski had raised its holding to 93 per cent. That month it closed one of its three outlet stores, in Basauri, while it renovated its nearby store in the Bilbondo shopping centre as the prototype for the rest of the chain. The same report described Dooers as a new concept specialised in sneakers, which had just opened its third shop, in San Sebastián.

Refits continued in the 2020s. In November 2024 Palco23 reported that the store in the Urbil centre in Usurbil, Gipuzkoa, had moved within the centre and reopened at 2,097 square metres, after refits that year in the Principado centre in Asturias and the Berceo centre in Logroño; the company said the new layouts gave priority to mountain and running. In February 2025 the company announced a new store in the Barnasud centre in Gavà, near Barcelona, its second in Catalonia, Palco23 reported. The chain also sold online to France and Portugal through its own website and marketplaces, Palco23 said in 2024.

Not every site stayed open. El Comercio, the Asturian daily, reported that Forum Sport closed its store in the ParqueAstur shopping centre in Corvera on 1 February 2025, after about a decade there. That 710-square-metre store had been fully refitted in 2021 with an omnichannel system that let staff help shoppers and take online orders, with extra space for running and mountain sports. Customers were directed to the Forum Sport store in the Atrio centre in nearby Avilés, open since 2016, which kept trading.

The ownership has stayed with Eroski. In March 2025 the sports-business site Palco23 reported that Eroski held 87 per cent of Forum Sport and that the rest was held by Gespaforum, the vehicle for staff shareholding. The same report described an agreement with the local retailer CCA, the Centre Comercial Andorrà, for a franchised store in Andorra. In October 2026 Crónica Vasca listed one store in Andorra as the chain’s only shop outside Spain.

Shop signs and owners.

European sporting-goods chains present themselves most visibly through the shop sign. A name, a logo and a set of colours have to work on a high-street fascia, a shopping-centre unit, a large out-of-town store and a website at once, and the companies show these marks on their own sites and in their store photographs. The colours and type in this guide are our own interpretation, not official specifications.

Store formats vary widely. SportScheck, the Munich chain, runs city-centre stores and an online shop, and in 2024 it opened a 2,000-square-metre Berlin store under a concept it calls “Future Retail,” FashionUnited reported. Sport 2000 separates a general multi-category shop from specialist running and team-sport formats that carry names of their own.

Ownership takes several forms, and it is worth stating plainly. Buying groups such as Sport 2000 and Intersport link independent shops that keep their own owners while sharing a name, buying terms and marketing; Germany’s competition authority named both groups as competitors when it reviewed SportScheck’s sale in 2020. Other chains belong to larger retail groups: SportScheck was owned by the Otto Group from 1991 and by Signa Retail from 2020, and since 2024 it has been part of Italy’s Cisalfa Sport. Own ranges sit beside outside brands, as with Witeblaze, the label Sport 2000 launched in 2023.

Corporate pages tell the founding story in each company’s own words, from Otto Scheck’s Munich clothing business of 1946 to the 36 French retailers who formed Sport 2000 in 1966. This guide sets out what can be checked about each chain — founders, owners, insolvencies and sales, with dates — and marks what rests only on the company’s own account.

A buying centre, a sneaker brand and a franchise.

Today Forum Sport runs more than one shop name. Palco23, citing the fashion-business site Modaes, reported in May 2026 that the company operated 45 stores under its main name and 17 under Dooers, its own sneaker-focused brand, all in Spain apart from the single store in Andorra. Dooers sells mainly through its own online store and competes in a crowded sneaker market, the company’s director told Modaes. Crónica Vasca gave a total of 65 stores, including Dooers, in October 2026, with close to 40 per cent of them, nearly 20, in the Basque Country.

The same Palco23 report called Forum Sport a central de compras, a buying centre owned by the Eroski group, and listed its main departments as running, training, lifestyle and court sports, with cycling, outdoor and football alongside. In spring 2026 it opened a franchised store of about 500 square metres in the Montevida Plaza retail park in La Alberca, in Murcia. Franchising was not entirely new: in November 2016 Palco23 reported that the chain had begun to expand through franchises with a store in Aranda de Duero, in Burgos. The Forum customer club had close to two million members, the company said.

For a design guide, Forum Sport shows how a regional chain founded with athletes as shareholders can grow inside a co-operative retail group while adding a separate sneaker name and its own franchise route. Compare the Spanish chain Decimas and the buying-group model of Intersport. For this guide we use Basque green, trail ochre and mist with a condensed athletic sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Forum Sport’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.