• by Tanya Gazdik , Yesterday

Dick’s Sporting Goods and Adobe are partnering to reshape how the retailer connects with its customers at every stage of the journey.

One initiative is AI-powered “digital coaches” on the Dick’s mobile app.

“Adobe said the new assistants will function as ‘AI agents,’ offering sport-specific training tips and guiding shoppers from product discovery to recommendations ‘informed by specific athlete needs,’” according to Digital Commerce 360. “Dick’s Sporting Goods looks to boost cross-channel messaging. As it does, it’s also adopting other Adobe enterprise tools to speed up content production and unify customer data.”

The partnership aims to support more personalized experiences for Dick’s shoppers — whom the retailer refers to as “athletes” — across touch points.

“Every athlete’s journey is unique, and it is our job to ensure that every interaction with our brand is focused on helping our athletes achieve their dreams,” said Emily Silver, chief marketing, ecommerce and athlete experience officer, Dick’s, in a release. “Our partnership with our technology team and Adobe will help us meet the promise of personalization at scale through AI, with a data and content foundation that enables our teams to deliver the power of our opinion and expert knowledge and create unique experiences for every athlete.”

Consumers are embracing large language model interfaces to discover and engage their favorite brands, according to Adobe. LLM is a type of AI designed to understand and produce human-like language.

“The announcement comes as retailers adjust to changes in online discovery,” according to Sports Goods Intelligence Europe. “Adobe said AI-generated referrals to retail sites increased 693 percent year-over-year during the 2025 holiday season, citing its own analytics.”

The partnership speaks to the value that AI can bring when CMOs and chief technology officers collaborate, building on top of an integrated customer data platform, that makes it easier for marketing teams to understand preferences and deliver experiences that are intuitive, relevant and deepen brand loyalty, according to Adobe. 

“The key shift for marketers is that chatbots, once seen as unreliable customer-service assistants, are now capable of playing a much larger role in customer relations strategies with the help of agentic AI,” according to Ad Age. “Not only can they provide a more intelligent and helpful interaction with a consumer, but they can also acquire more data and leverage it to enable future instances of personalization.”

Dick’s Sporting Goods is drawing fresh attention on Wall Street after announcing the partnership with Adobe.

“Despite a 2.8% one day share price decline and 3.6% pullback over the past week, Dick’s Sporting Goods still shows a 15.4% 30 day share price return and a 20.0% one year total shareholder return,” according to Simply Wall St. “This points to momentum that has cooled recently rather than reversed. With Dick’s Sporting Goods trading at $220 and an average analyst target of $238.77, plus a value score of 1 suggesting some fundamental appeal, the key question is whether current pricing leaves real upside or already reflects future growth potential.”