Sports Authority, Inc. (formerly The Sports Authority) was an American sports retailer based in Englewood, Colorado. At its peak, Sports Authority operated 463 stores in 45 states and Puerto Rico. The company's website was on the GSI Commerce platform and supported the retail stores as well as other multi-channel programs. A joint venture with ÆON Co., Ltd., operates "Sports Authority" stores in Japan under a licensing agreement.

On March 2, 2016, Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the case was converted to Chapter 7 a few months later. On May 18, 2016, the company's stores were sold to a group of liquidators and on May 25, CEO Michael Foss announced that all of the stores would close by the end of August 2016. On June 30, 2016, Dick's Sporting Goods won the auction for Sports Authority's brand name and intellectual property.

On July 15, 2016, the online store closed operations, redirecting users to the Dick's Sporting Goods website. On July 21, 2016, the purchase of Sports Authority's intellectual property by rival Dick's Sporting Goods was approved.

Gart Brothers, or Gart Bros. began in 1928, when Denver Post newspaper carrier Nathan Gart started the company with $50 (~$938.00 in 2025) in fishing rod samples.

In 1971, the Gart Bros. Company opened the "Sportscastle" superstore in Denver, Colorado, at the corner of 10th Avenue and Broadway in a building that had housed auto dealerships for decades. The 1980s marked a period of substantial growth for the company through a series of acquisitions. These mergers included Hagan's Sports Ltd. (1987) and Stevens Brown of Salt Lake City (1987). In the fall of 1992, Leonard Green & Partners acquired Thrifty and became the company's largest shareholder.

At the same time that Gart Bros. opened the Sportscastle, the Hochberg family and the Cantor family opened their first Sportmart in Niles, Illinois. The company grew to 60 stores in nine states. Gart Bros. and Sportmart merged in 1998. Sportmart briefly operated in Canada in the 1990s before closing down their operations after two years.

Oshman's Sporting Goods was founded in Houston, Texas, in 1919 by Jake Oshman. By 1965, Oshman's had become the largest sporting goods chain in Texas, operating 43 Oshman's SuperSports USA stores and 15 traditional stores. In 2001, the company merged with 120-stores Gart Bros., two years before eventually merging with and changing their name to Sports Authority.

The Sports Authority, Inc., was founded in Lakes Mall in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, by a syndicate of venture capital groups and several key founding executives. Jack A. Smith, formerly COO of Herman's World of Sporting Goods, CEO; Roy M. Cohen, senior vice president and general merchandise manager; Richard Lynch, senior vice president and CFO and Arnold Sedel, vice president of stores operations, were the founding executives. The venture capital syndicate was led by William Blair Venture Partners and included First Chicago Venture Partners, Bain Capital, Phillips-Smith Venture Partners, Marquette Venture Partners, and Bessemer Securities.^{[citation needed]}