Last week, Frasers Group brought content creators and journalists to Liverpool to unveil its new Sports Direct flagship, located inside the historic Compton House and complete with an Everlast gym on the top floor. The goal with the store opening was to “break the internet”, according to the PR team. In one of the highlights of the day, editors and fitness influencers participated alongside CEO Michael Murray in a condensed training session for Hyrox (a race that requires participants to complete eight one-kilometre runs, broken up by workouts like burpees and rowing). Later, Murray answered questions about himself and the business for an interview with buzzy Instagram account The Numbers Game — while fully submerged in an ice bath.
Murray wants to be seen as more than a retail executive. He presents himself the way many male millennial entrepreneurs do: appearing on podcasts, posting about fitness discipline, and breaking down his leadership journey on social media. The aim goes beyond self-promotion — it’s about signalling a new and more culturally tapped-in identity for Frasers Group, which he has been leading since 2022.
The new Sports Direct store — which is more like a lifestyle and entertainment hub than a shop — is a 90,000-square-foot, three-storey expression of that goal. There are interactive activities and games throughout: you can try and jump as high as Michael Jordan; put yourself through an Under Armour agility test; and take part in challenges in the interactive Adidas football skill zone. The Everlast gym includes Brass Monkey saunas, a reformer pilates studio and a MyProtein smoothie bar.
It is the kind of retail spectacle only a company of Frasers Group’s size could pull off, and part of a £50 million investment in Liverpool — a city where passion for sports runs deep and dressing to impress is part of the culture (around half of that was spent on the Sports Direct store, the rest on the Flannels flagship, which opened in 2022). Later on the day of the Sports Direct opening event, the company held a party at the Flannels store to celebrate the arrival of Kim Kardashian’s Skims; another coup for the group, given the brand only has three other wholesale partners in the UK: Selfridges, Harrods and End.
The investment in Liverpool speaks to Murray’s strategy of targeting underserved affluent shoppers outside of capital cities. “We take a luxury gym or a luxury boutique for granted in London. So take them to regional cities and offer great brands and great experiences in a great environment. We’re doing the same across the business,” Murray says on Zoom ahead of the store opening. “It goes across the entire group, making sure that we bring a really relevant environment and offering to regional consumers, who sometimes, let’s be honest, are forgotten about.”
The elevation strategy appears to be working. Under Murray’s leadership, Frasers Group — which is listed on the London Stock Exchange — has grown into a £4.9 billion, profitable business. Group revenue declined by 7.4 per cent in the fiscal year ending April 2025, down from £5.3 billion the year before, partly due to offloading ailing businesses like Game Spain and Studio retail, and partly due to the challenging macroeconomic environment. But the losses were offset by strong growth at Sports Direct and the continued success of its elevation strategy across brands — and group adjusted profit before tax was up 2.8 per cent to £560.2 million. (For context, group revenue was £3.6 billion in 2021, the year before Murray’s appointment, and £3.7 billion in 2019, before the pandemic hit.)
Murray speaks proudly about being close to the operations and execution of Frasers Group, having risen the ranks in the business from managing the property division, buying and selling store units and private properties for his now father-in-law, Mike Ashley (founder of Sports Direct International, which later became Frasers Group). Murray was promoted to head of elevation in 2019, taking on the top job three years later as Ashley stepped back.
Today, Frasers operates 40 retailers, fashion brands, sportswear brands and fitness chains, including Sports Direct, Flannels, Frasers, Evans Cycles, Everlast Gyms, Jack Wills, Gieves Hawkes and Sofa.com. Its real estate portfolio includes more than 1,500 stores, most of which are in the UK.
Its aggressive expansion has been notable as much of the rest of the retail industry has struggled — indeed, Frasers Group has sought to capitalise on those struggles by buying up distressed companies such as Jack Wills and Matches. The latter’s subsequent collapse into administration last March, just a few months after Frasers Group acquired it, was a dark spot for the group (brands were owed around £36 million at the time). However, as global retailers continue to falter (Ssense and Luisaviaroma are the latest undergoing restructuring strategies in order to survive), Murray feels Frasers Group is well-positioned to fill the white space, supported by its bricks-and-mortar expertise and logistical capabilities. Earlier this month, the company announced that it had taken a majority stake in US retailer The Webster.
The group’s original luxury retailer, Flannels — which it acquired in 2017 — has also been on a “rapid ascent”, Murray says, despite macroeconomic challenges. Flannels now has 80 stores across the UK, up from around 13 when it was brought into the group. “Now, there’s not much room for growth in the UK. Flannels, I would say, is 90 per cent done. It will never be 100 per cent because there will always be stores we want to either upsize or relocate. But we’ve got the right brand assortment. We’ve got the right locations. The business is on the right trajectory.”
There’s also the opportunity for expansion in a challenging global climate, Murray adds. “We’ve got to capitalise on fragmentation in the industry, where there’s a lack of investment and high uncertainty amongst many other multi-brand retailers,” he says.
Welcoming The Webster
Expanding its global presence is where The Webster comes in. The boutique chain operates 13 curated multi-brand stores across popular retail locations like Miami, New York, Los Angeles and growing retail hotspots like Austin, stocking brands including Saint Laurent, Rick Owens and Chanel. In an interview at the time the acquisition was announced, The Webster’s founder and CEO Laure Hériard Dubreuil told Vogue Business the deal would allow it to achieve a scale it couldn’t without a partner (she retains a minority stake and will continue to run the day-to-day).
The group behind the Matches acquisition is making moves into the US with a majority stake in The Webster. It comes amid a tough time for multi-brand retail.
“When the Webster opportunity came up in the US, it screamed what Flannels was back in the ’90s, 2000s: very boutique, very curated, very strong brand relationships desired from the world’s best brands — even Chanel — from a wholesale perspective,” Murray says. “We believe we can help The Webster go on an evolution of potentially scaling even further from 13 doors to maybe 25 or 35. Whatever the number is, we’re not sure yet. But we believe that we’ve got the right operational know-how to help Laure and the team scale that business.”
It’s a big swing to bet on multi-brand retail, particularly in North America, where several key retailers are ailing. Saks Global, which now operates Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, continues to face financial challenges post-merger, while Canadian e-tailer Ssense is restructuring following a CCAA bankruptcy protection filing, with $371 million in debt.
But Murray says the US is a very attractive market precisely because department stores there are underinvested. “We know how much it costs to invest in stores, and especially big department stores — it costs a fortune, and the likelihood of them getting the level of investment they need to satisfy how the brands want to be presented is very unlikely at scale,” he says. “I see that as a big opportunity for The Webster to capitalise and grow in the US market. It’s already a relevant offer, but becoming more relevant on a bigger scale.”
He also stresses Frasers Group’s ability to invest in long-term growth strategies, rather than expecting short-term gains. “We’ve been in retail for 40 years. We invest heavily in the back-end systems: logistics, operations, supply chain. We’ve got a much longer time horizon when it comes to investment criteria than maybe some other retailers who are trying to manage their business quarter to quarter.” Frasers Group doesn’t pay dividends and reinvests profits back into the business, which helps it to invest for the long term, he adds.
So we shouldn’t expect a drastic change with The Webster overnight? “We’ll take a year or two working with Laure to really understand her business, how she operates, where the opportunities are, what infrastructure we’d need to put in place before we can scale, to make sure it’s efficient and [determine] what the investment criteria is, which partnerships, which locations, which landlords.”
When the news was announced, industry folks expressed concern that the highly curated boutique stores would lose their community spirit if scaled up too fast. “Whether there’s the flagship stores and there’s more commercial luxury [stores], we don’t know yet. It’s very early days,” says Murray. The Webster deal was done in “a matter of weeks”, he adds, so there’s not been much time to settle on the plans.
Lessons from Matches
Some level of concern about The Webster’s future direction is perhaps understandable, given the very public collapse of Matches.
Frasers Group acquired the multi-brand retailer for £52 million in December 2023. At the time, Murray vowed to “unlock synergies and drive profitable growth for Matches”, which was loss-making. But just three months later, it was announced that Matches was to be put into administration, after it “became clear that too much change would be required to restructure it, and the continued funding requirements would be far in excess of amounts that the group considers to be viable”. More than 270 Matches employees were made redundant the next day, and the company was eventually wound down. During that time, Frasers repurchased the rights to use Matches’s intellectual property for £20 million plus VAT.
Reflecting on it now, Murray says he had no choice but to make the call to shutter Matches. “It’s very difficult to say, look, this has been the wrong decision. But it’s worse to make no decision after you’ve made a wrong [move], and that’s why we walked away from the Matches business,” he says.
Murray acknowledges that Frasers lacked experience with pure-play online retail. “We are a [business that specialises in] bricks-and-mortar retailers with websites, that’s how we tend to work and what we focus on. I think Matches had so many structural difficulties, which we weren’t fully aware of because the [due diligence] process was very quick,” Murray says.
Frasers purchased Matches IP to make sure it had “flexibility for the future”, he says. Ever since, speculation has swirled over plans for the retailer. Earlier this year, Frasers confirmed it was consulting with brand partners on several proposals, including a membership model.
Murray still can’t yet reveal the plans, but reaffirms that Matches will relaunch in some form. There’s going to be something “very exciting” to announce soon, he says. “I think people will be quite surprised when they see what the plans are.”
While Frasers has made a lot of headlines for acquisitions in recent years, we shouldn’t necessarily expect a further sweep, Murray says. In today’s climate, he is investing and leading with caution. “When people announce strategies and do anything they have to do to please either the media or the stock market, that’s where it goes wrong,” he says. “The Webster proposition was very special and unique. We’re not out there hunting for more acquisitions for acquisition’s sake.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
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Frasers Group plots Matches relaunch
What really happened with Matches and where do we go from here?
Correction: This story was updated to reflect Frasers Group offloaded Game Spain, not Game UK.
