Every athlete gets a digital coach. AI-powered, at scale.
DICK'S Sporting Goods partnered with Adobe to deploy Adobe Brand Concierge — a conversational AI agent — as a "digital coach" inside its mobile app, the largest sporting goods retail app in the US. The technical stack is fully declared: Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) unifies customer data from purchases, loyalty programmes, and browsing behaviour into a single profile; Real-Time CDP enables real-time audience segmentation based on current intent signals rather than historical behaviour; Journey Optimizer manages cross-channel orchestration across app, email, and in-store triggers. The Brand Concierge layer sits on top of this infrastructure, intercepting user intent in real time — a runner opening the app three days before a race triggers different recommendations than the same user browsing in January. DICK'S serves millions of amateur athletes across every major sport category; the AI layer is designed to replicate the expertise of a specialist sales associate at scale, 24/7, across all users simultaneously. Status: production partnership, announced April 2025.
Why it matters
DICK'S Sporting Goods is not a peripheral case in AI-powered sport — it is arguably the most commercially significant deployment in this issue. The company is the primary retail touchpoint for tens of millions of amateur athletes before they engage with any league, club, or governing body. Putting an AI advisory layer at that moment of intent means intercepting the relationship between an athlete and their sport at its most formative commercial stage. The value proposition is clear; the risk is symmetrical. The productive friction of a knowledgeable sales associate — who might convince a runner to buy a shoe they hadn't considered — disappears when the recommendation engine optimises for conversion against a user profile. Total personalisation maximises relevance but may narrow discovery. Whether that serves the athlete or the retail margin is a question the partnership documentation does not address.