Dick’s Sporting Goods received more than 10,000 applications for its creator program this year
Dick’s Sporting Goods is boosting its creator roster as it looks to play a bigger role in culture, events and social media.
This year, the retailer is expanding Varsity Team, its ambassador program open to both Dick’s employees and external creators, to reach its largest membership ever. Varsity Team members partner with Dick’s and its top national brands on content for marketing campaigns and social platforms. Dick’s is currently wading through its largest applicant pool to date: 10,800 people applied this year for around 60 spots — up from 5,300 last year for 50 spots. The program originated in 2021, and it was first limited to Dick’s employees before opening to the public two years ago.
Varsity Team isn’t Dick’s only creator effort; outside of the program, Dick’s recruits influencers to talk about specific events and sales for occasions like Mother’s Day and the holidays. But Varsity Team is unique, executives said, as it taps a mix of its own internal talent, athletes and everyday influencers. It also has appointed stars like Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall — who are Olympic and Paralympic track and field athletes, respectively — as “team captains.” Varsity Team is the first group Dick’s turns to for content, and it’s the one Dick’s relies on to participate in social media trends and events like the WNBA Live and the Chicago Marathon.
“Obviously, with traditional media, you can buy a commercial,” Nicole Marcus, influencer marketing lead at Dick’s, told Modern Retail. “But my team is excited about content creators, because we know sports and storytelling go hand in hand. We see creators as the new storytellers. We’re excited about getting them to more events and [participating in] cultural moments.”
A wide-ranging roster
When it comes to Varsity Team, Dick’s is looking for a wide range of folks, not just household names.
These can be anyone from store associates to NIL athletes to athletes’ families to coaches to Paralympians. Participants must be at least 18 years old, and they should represent a wide variety of cities for geographic diversity. Overall, Dick’s is seeking applicants who can film and edit their own content and feel comfortable speaking about their routines, challenges and shopping journeys. In December, for instance, “Dancing With the Stars” dancer Alan Bersten — a member of the 2025 Varsity Team — posted an Instagram video about buying Pokémon cards at Dick’s Sporting Goods.
“There are tons of really well-known athletes that are great for brand recognition and brand awareness,” Marcus said, “but really, what we’re looking for is people in sports that are showing their life behind the scenes, not just the game-day highlights.” That could include, for instance, the more difficult parts of being an athlete, such as the reality of injuries; what it’s like to shop for the back-to-school season as a college football player; or what it’s like to train for and run the New York Marathon.
“Our goal is to create a roster that’s as diverse as the athletes that shop our products are,” Marcus said.
According to Dick’s website, previous Varsity Team members include NBA dancer Alyssa Jessloski (3,800 Instagram followers), runner Chris Chung (52,800 Instagram followers) and Dick’s Sporting Goods associate merchant Kelsey Paul (7,300 Instagram followers). Dick’s holds a four-day orientation in Florida each year to train the newest batch of Varsity Team members.
Building a Varsity Team with various social media followings is a good cover-all-bases approach, said Arthur Leopold, the CEO and co-founder of Agentio, an AI-native platform for creator advertising. So-called macro creators can be helpful in generating awareness, he said, but micro creators tend to have dedicated fan bases that can bring people over to brands. “Their conversion power is two to three to four times as high as a macro creator,” Leopold said.
For Dick’s to tap into all of these levels “is a great strategy,” Leopold added. In fact, he said, “I think every brand needs to have a full-funnel creator strategy, just as they all have a full-funnel marketing strategy.”
The evolution of Varsity Team
Varsity Team has come a long way from its origins five years ago, Marcus shared. Employees came up with the idea in 2021 after noticing that their colleagues had started posting engaging videos on social media, particularly TikTok. “Their content was great and really in line with the influencers that we were contracting for other larger campaigns,” Marcus said.
Marcus and her team then brainstormed how to create an employee influencer program. The first iteration only had one employee, but by 2023, Dick’s had hired an influencer agency to help. In 2023, it received applications from 700 employees, and it appointed 18 of them as Varsity Team members. It partnered with employees again in 2024 before expanding to the public in 2025. “We saw such success and demand for additional content, and more teams wanted to work with [the influencers] in different categories,” Marcus said.
Today, Varsity Team members can work across the Dick’s organization. They receive seeded products to promote during dedicated marketing campaigns, are featured on Dick’s product pages and receive invitations to movie screenings. They also get a quarterly “Trend Box” that includes top products from Dick’s partner brands, and many members go on to make unboxing videos. In October, fitness influencer Shelby Scott made an Instagram video showing off “all the fleeces you need for the chilly season” from Dick’s Sporting Goods.
The 2025 Varsity Team generated 2,500 pieces of content with a total of 4 million organic views. In 2026, Dick’s hopes to feature more footwear-, soccer- and running-related videos and posts, as it’s seeing particular demand for those categories. It’s also asking creators to take part in social media trends — like “6-7,” for instance — and be candid about their sports journeys.
Building trust
Quynh Mai, founder of creative strategy and cultural intelligence agency Qulture, told Modern Retail that Dick’s is smart to focus its creator strategy on actual people in the sports world. Trust in brands keeps going down, she said, and the Varsity Team is “creating advocates for the brand that, frankly, can cut through just as well as a celebrity.”
“Today, in social media, it’s not about your follow account,” she said. “It’s about how engaging you are, how entertaining you are and if what you’re saying resonates. Short-form videos and ‘get-ready-with-me’ videos aren’t doing as well as long-form, personal storytelling. So, Dick’s is right on time with that.”
Dick’s will continue to build its broader influencer program outside of Varsity Team, Marcus shared. The retailer currently works with “hundreds” of creators who make content for the holidays or local events like store openings. They also show up at Dick’s various House of Sport locations, which have an experiential focus. “Influencers are definitely being included in almost every campaign,” Marcus said.
Mai, for her part, expects to see even more brands launch creator programs in 2026 and beyond, especially as “authenticity” remains a buzzword.
“In the age of AI, brands are embracing creators like never before,” Mai said. “Every year, I keep thinking it’s going to wane. It hasn’t, and it’s going to be even more important in 2026, because as our media feeds become more AI-generated, what stands out is human storytelling and human experience. Those things are going to rise to the top.”