Sports Authority Snub, No Bids For Chain
The deadline for bids on Sports Authority has passed without an offer from rival Modell's Sporting Goods and British retailer Sports Direct International, people familiar with the matter said Friday.
There will be an auction for the leases and other remaining assets of the failed retailer, but there's little to no hope of a deal that could save a significant piece of the Sports Authority chain, which filed for bankruptcy protection in March.
At one point, Modell's and Sports Direct were in talks about a bid that could have saved 100 to 200 Sports Authority stores and the jobs of thousands of employees, these people said.
That proposal shrunk over the past week, the people said, and when bids were due on Thursday, there was no bid from Modell's and Sports Direct.
So while either of the big sporting goods sellers could still make a bid on Sports Authority's intellectual property, including its online selling apparatus, the string of stores that stretched across the U.S. will not survive the bankruptcy.
A spokesman for Sports Direct, Britain's largest seller of sports gear, could not immediately be reached Friday for comment. A Modell's spokesman could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Sports Authority did not respond to a request to comment on the state of bids for the fading company.
Going-out-of-business sales are under way at some 450 stores, conducted by liquidators Hilco Merchant Resources LLC, Gordon Brothers Retail Partners LLC and Tiger Capital Group LLC. Sports Authority's trying to pay off more than $1 billion in debt in chapter 11.
Write to Peg Brickley at peg.brickley@wsj.com and Lillian Rizzo at Lillian.Rizzo@wsj.com