Academy Sports reported its Q1 earnings Tuesday, highlighting a recent string of record-breaking quarters in the sporting goods industry.

The company saw its highest-ever gross margin, increasing 89.2% to $563.7 million. Net sales jumped 39.1% year-over-year to $1.58 billion.

While e-commerce sales declined 21% year-over-year, they’ve increased 300% since 2019 due to pandemic-driven online shopping. Net income was $177.8 million compared to a loss of $10 million last year.

With Academy’s e-commerce numbers trending in the right direction, the retailer plans to expand its brick-and-mortar stores from 259 to potentially 850.

Academy Sports isn’t the only sporting goods store trending upward.

• In its first-quarter earnings, Dick’s Sporting Goods recorded a 119% increase in revenue year-over-year to $2.92 billion — its highest-ever quarterly earnings. Some stores’ sales, including e-commerce, grew 115% year-over-year. 
• Hibbett Sports recorded an 87.8% increase in revenue to $506.8 million for its first quarter, beating out analysts’ estimates of $389.65 million.
• Last month, Big 5 Sporting Goods reported $272.8 million in quarterly revenue, a 25.3% uptick from the year prior.

Similar to Dick’s earnings report, Academy Sports credited its apparel, footwear, and team sports sections for the boost in sales, as well as its omnichannel execution for consumer demand.

It remains to be seen if the status quo in golf can be disrupted, but more than one upstart league is trying.

The Premier Golf League —which is different from the similarly designed Super Golf League —is targeting a 2023 launch.

The PGL is structured to create a sense of rivalry and narrative among elite golfers. The league plans to hold a dozen tournaments in the U.S. each year, plus six more overseas. 

• Tournament winners would net $4 million of the $20 million prize purse. Last place would take home $150,000. 
• Twelve teams of four players would participate in each tournament, plus an extra, fan-selected team. Teams would rise and fall through a promotion/relegation system similar to European soccer.
• The league itself would be half-owned by a community of golf players, tournament operators, and fans.

Seeking to differentiate its broadcasts, the PGL said that every shot would be available to viewers.

When the Super Golf League began making waves, the PGA Tour threatened players with a lifetime ban if they joined alternate leagues. Andy Gartiner, the PGL’s CEO, dismissed that idea and said players should be free to chart their own paths.

The PGA Tour has sought to build its own brand by offering a $40 million pool for the 10 athletes who drive the most engagement with the sport through social media and other methods, with the top player getting $8 million.

For Kanye West’s 44th birthday, he got an instant sellout for his latest clothing item.

West’s Yeezy Gap line released a light blue puffer jacket at $200. The unisex item was out of stock within hours. The line complements Yeezy’s other major apparel deal with adidas.

The jacket is the first release of a 10-year partnership between Gap and Yeezy. West’s brand is expected to receive royalties and possibly equity under the deal.

• Swiss bank UBS estimated Yeezy’s brand value between $3.2 billion to $4.7 billion. West fully owns the company.
• The partnership with Gap could be worth around $970 million of that total. Gap previously said it expects $150 million in sales from the brand tie-up in its first year. Gap is aiming for $1 billion in annual Yeezy Gap sales by 2025. 
• Yeezy signed its shoe deal with adidas in 2013 after leaving Nike the previous year. The Yeezy-adidas line has benefited both sides, bringing in nearly $1.7 billion in revenue last year.  
• Yeezy earns 15% on all shoe sales from its adidas line. The deal runs through 2026.

Last October, West publicly lobbied for board seats at both adidas and Gap, calling out both companies for a lack of diversity on their boards.

Nvidia continues to cause a consumer frenzy thanks to the limited inventory of its latest graphics card, the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition. 

The company aims to serve gamers, but its graphics cards are also effective in performing artificial-intelligence calculations and mining cryptocurrencies — making them highly desirable and hard to find.

And that’s on top of the semiconductor shortage plaguing the tech industry. 

Last week, the California-based chip maker released its new $1,199 graphics card exclusively at brick-and-mortar Best Buy locations.

The catch? Only one Best Buy per state received the RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition, with just 64 units available at each location. Over 200 hopeful consumers lined up at Best Buy in West Los Angeles.

“The final insult Nvidia could throw at us was in giving 64 cards to the entire city of Los Angeles,” Everette Fuqua, who lined up at 3:30 a.m. to score the card, told PCMag.

Despite the lack of inventory, Nvidia has enjoyed a monster start to its fiscal 2022.

• Reported $5.6 billion in revenue in Q1, an 84% increase year-over-year.
• Earnings beat Wall Street estimates of $5.41 billion. 
• Its gaming business reported record-breaking revenue of $2.76 billion in Q1, up 106% year-over-year.

Nvidia recently submitted an application to Chinese regulators to review a $40 billion acquisition of Arm, a British semiconductor and software company, per Reuters.

Nvidia anticipates the deal will close by March 2022 and help alleviate its inventory issues.