Why Anta Leads China's Sportswear Market

Foreign sportswear brands arriving in China usually think they are competing with Nike and Adidas. They are competing with Anta, and more precisely with a portfolio Anta assembled specifically to occupy every price point a foreign brand might have wanted.

This is the part of the China sportswear story that gets skipped in favour of market size figures. The market is large and it is still growing. It is also one of the most competently defended consumer categories in the country. Understanding who holds which shelf is the difference between a plan and a wish.

Who actually holds the market

Reported shares vary with the year and the method, so treat these as orders of magnitude rather than precise figures. On Euromonitor data for 2024, cited widely, the split ran roughly Anta 23 percent, Nike 20.7, Li-Ning 9.4, Adidas 8.7. For 2025 one trade report puts Anta at around 21.8 percent and another at 23, in both cases ahead of Nike.

Whichever figure you use, the headline is the same and it has been stable for several years: the largest sportswear company in China is Chinese, and the two Western giants are now fighting for second place rather than defending first.

The portfolio is the strategy

Anta did not win on its own brand alone. It bought the positions a foreign entrant would have targeted.

Brand	How Anta holds it	Shelf it occupies
Anta	Own brand	Mass and mid market, national positioning
FILA	Franchised rights for mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, acquired 2009	Premium sports fashion
Arc’teryx, Salomon, Wilson	Through Amer Sports, led in a roughly 5 billion dollar deal in 2019; Amer is NYSE listed	Technical outdoor and premium performance

Look at what FILA has become in Anta’s hands. In 2025 FILA generated around RMB 28.47 billion in revenue and RMB 7.42 billion in operating profit, which exceeded the Anta brand’s own operating profit of RMB 7.21 billion for the first time. The premium sports fashion position in China, the one a European brand would naturally aim at, is held by a brand run with full Chinese design, distribution and retail control.

Arc’teryx matters even more for anyone in technical outdoor. It has become genuinely aspirational in urban China in a way it is not in many Western markets, and it sits inside a group with Chinese retail expertise and Chinese capital behind it. If your pitch is premium technical credibility, that is the incumbent.

So where is the space

Not in the middle. The mid market is where domestic brands have the cost structure, the retail footprint and the national brand sentiment advantage, and a foreign brand entering there competes on price against companies that can win a price war.

What has worked for brands we have watched:

A specific discipline, done seriously. Climbing, trail, triathlon, racket sports, swimming. Narrow enough that the large portfolios do not bother, deep enough that practitioners care about the detail and will seek you out.
Equipment and technical product rather than apparel. Apparel is fashion and fashion is defended. A shoe for a specific foot shape, a piece of kit with a real engineering argument, these compete on merit.
Supplying the Chinese sports economy. Fabrics, components, gym equipment, club and event supply. Unglamorous, B2B, and genuinely open. See fitness and bodybuilding distributors in China.
Participation sports rather than spectator branding. Running, cycling and outdoor participation in China keeps growing, and the people doing it research their gear properly.

Short term conditions have been reasonable. Jefferies forecast Chinese sportswear retail sales growing more than 5 percent year on year in the first two months of 2026, although Anta’s own second-quarter 2026 update described low single digit retail growth for both the Anta and FILA brands. Growth, but not the growth of five years ago.

What this means for how you spend

A foreign brand in a defended category cannot buy awareness. The budget required to out-shout Anta and Nike in China does not exist for most companies, and spending a fraction of it produces nothing.

What works instead is being findable and credible to the people already looking for what you specifically make. A Chinese trail runner researching shoes, a climbing gym sourcing equipment, a distributor looking for a racket brand: these are search behaviours, and they are cheap to win because nobody is competing for them. That is the work we do, and in this category it is close to the only honest route for a brand without a nine-figure budget.

On the social side, Douyin has become a real sports retail channel rather than just a branding one, which is worth understanding before allocating anything. Our piece on how football clubs use Douyin in China covers the mechanics, and the growth of Chinese fitness centres covers where participation is going.

Questions we get asked

Who leads the China sportswear market?

Anta Sports, on every recent estimate we have seen, ahead of Nike. Reported shares range from roughly 21.8 to 23 percent depending on source and year.

Does Anta own FILA?

Anta holds the franchised rights for mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, acquired in 2009, and runs design, distribution and retail there. The brand globally belongs to Fila Holdings of South Korea.

Which platforms sell sportswear best in China?

Tmall and JD for conventional e-commerce, Douyin for discovery and increasingly for direct sale, Xiaohongshu for the research and recommendation phase. Which one leads depends heavily on whether you sell apparel or technical equipment.

Is it too late for a foreign sportswear brand in China?

Too late to enter the mid market broadly, in our view. Not too late for a specific discipline, for technical equipment, or for B2B supply into a sports economy that keeps expanding.

About the author

Jon Wang founded SEO Agency China. He works with sportswear and apparel brands entering China, where the brand that wins is usually the one a Chinese buyer can verify, not the one with the biggest campaign. Connect with Jon on LinkedIn.

Why Anta Owns China’s Sportswear Market, and Where the Gaps Are