DICK'S Sporting Goods

Review by eFreeware

If you buy athletic gear more than once or twice a year, the DICK'S Sporting Goods app is built with you in mind. It puts the retailer's catalog of apparel, footwear, equipment and accessories in one place, adds the ScoreCard rewards program on top, and lets you check what a nearby store has before you make the trip. That combination suits people replacing running shoes every few months, parents kitting out kids for a fall season, and anyone who follows sneaker or drinkware releases.

The app is free, so nothing stands between you and the catalog. What you get instead is a storefront that also happens to track your points, hold your favorites and, if you connect a fitness tracker, reward you for moving. For a shopping app tied to a single retailer, that is a broader set of jobs than most manage.

It has been on Android since April 2014 and sits at a 4.8 average from 56,710 ratings, with more than five million installs. Those numbers suggest a tool people keep rather than delete after one order, which is the fairest thing you can say about a retailer's app.

Built for regular athletes, families and sneaker buyers

The clearest fit is someone who already shops at DICK'S and wants the store in their pocket. The app covers sportswear for the gym, the field and the track, plus equipment and footwear for sports including soccer and baseball. If your purchases follow a season, a training block or a growing child's shoe size, having the whole assortment searchable is more useful than driving to a store on a guess.

The second group is reward-minded shoppers. The ScoreCard program is woven through the app rather than bolted on, so points, rewards and account management live in the same place as the products. Anyone who already carries a ScoreCard, a ScoreCard+ membership or the retailer's credit card has a reason to keep the app installed.

The third is the release chaser. The developer pitches app-exclusive sneaker drops, baseball and drinkware drops, and offers that only appear in the app. If limited releases are part of how you shop, that framing is aimed at you.

Families get a mention here too, and not just as marketing. Favorites lists can be shared with friends and family, which is a small feature that makes a difference when several people are contributing to one shopping list for a season or a holiday.

Shopping the catalog, checking stock and picking up in store

The core of the app is straightforward retail. You can shop at any hour for game day essentials, clothing, shoes and cleats from brands such as Nike, Adidas, New Balance and Under Armour, alongside Timberland boots and Owala drinkware. The range stretches from soccer and baseball cleats to running shoes, outdoor apparel and accessories, so it covers both sport-specific gear and everyday wear.

The feature I find most useful in principle is stock checking. You can see what is available at your closest store and buy online to collect there, which removes the most common reason a store trip fails. Whether you are hunting a specific cleat size before a season starts or replacing a worn-out pair of running shoes, knowing the shelf situation in advance is worth more than another browsing feed.

In-store tools round this out. Barcode scanning and location-based offers are there to speed up a visit and surface deals relevant to where you are. The developer describes the in-store experience as one the app makes easier for people who find it daunting, which is a fair description of what scanning and local offers can do.

New arrivals and exclusive collections sit alongside the main catalog, and the developer also lists Pokémon Trading Card Game releases among the things you can find. That last item is a reminder that this is a general sporting goods store rather than a specialist running or soccer shop.

ScoreCard points, membership tiers and the credit card

Rewards are the second half of the app. You can manage a ScoreCard, a ScoreCard+ membership and the DICK'S Credit Card account from inside it, which keeps the administrative side of loyalty in one place instead of a separate website.

Earning points looks straightforward: sign in or scan in store and you collect one point for every dollar spent on qualifying purchases. Points can be tracked and redeemed as rewards. The word qualifying does real work there, and it is the developer's own wording, so not every line in your basket necessarily counts.

ScoreCard+ is the paid tier, promising a year of extra perks and better rewards. There is also a stream of ScoreCard exclusive offers flagged in the app. If you shop here often enough for the membership to pay for itself, the app is where you would manage it; if you shop occasionally, the free ScoreCard tier is the part that matters.

MOVE turns your fitness tracker into points

The MOVE feature is the most interesting thing here because it does something a store app does not have to do. Link a fitness tracker and hit your daily activity goal to collect ScoreCard points. Challenges add another way to pick up points on top of that.

Garmin, Fitbit, MapMyRun and Apple Health are all supported. If you already wear one of those and log activity anyway, MOVE converts something you are doing regardless into a small reward. It will not suit anyone who does not track activity, and it is a bonus rather than a reason to install on its own.

What appeals to me is the logic of it: the store sells the gear, the app rewards the training that gear is for. It gives the app a reason to be opened on a rest day, not only when your shoes wear out.

Favorites lists you can hand to someone else

Favorites are the quiet utility feature. You build lists of clothing, shoes and gear, then share a list with friends and family. It suits holiday shopping, but also a birthday, a team kit or a school season.

For anyone who has ever sent a screenshot of a product page to a relative, this is the tidier version. It also doubles as a personal wishlist you can return to when a sale lands or when you are ready to replace something.

It is not a complex tool, and it does not need to be. Adding items and passing the list along is the whole job, and it is the kind of feature that quietly fits well in a shopping app.

Free to install, with no ads and no in-app purchases

The app costs nothing to download, which is worth stating plainly because it is not the default for retail apps.

The money side of this app is the store itself. You can spend on products, and the developer offers a paid ScoreCard+ membership alongside the free ScoreCard program and the retailer's credit card. Those are commercial products you choose to take on, not tolls on using the app.

The app can be judged purely on whether it helps you shop.

How it compares with other ways to buy the same gear

The obvious alternative is the retailer's website, and for a lot of people the two are interchangeable. The app's advantages are the ones that depend on being on a phone: barcode scanning in a store, offers tied to your location, app-only drops and offers, and a rewards view you can pull up at the register.

A general marketplace is the other comparison. Those cast a wider net across sellers and brands, but they do not carry this retailer's ScoreCard program, its in-store stock lookup or its MOVE activity rewards. If the loyalty program is not part of your shopping, a marketplace may cover the same ground.

Specialist shops are the third option. A dedicated running store or a soccer specialist will go deeper in one category, while this app spreads across team sports, training, outdoor wear, drinkware and trading cards. Which is better depends entirely on whether you want depth in one sport or one place for the whole family's gear.

The honest framing is that this app is the retailer's own storefront with the loyalty program attached. If you already shop there, it is the most direct route. If you do not, the catalog and the rewards are the case for starting.

A worthwhile install for regular DICK'S shoppers

I would point this app at people who buy athletic gear on a schedule: runners replacing shoes, parents equipping kids for a season, players who need cleats before a first practice, and anyone who tracks sneaker or drinkware releases. The ScoreCard program and the MOVE activity rewards give those shoppers a reason to open it between purchases, and the stock check plus in-store pickup saves the wasted trip.

The free download makes it an easy thing to try. The paid ScoreCard+ membership and the credit card are optional commercial products, and the app works as a storefront without either.

If you rarely buy sports gear, or you prefer a marketplace that spans many sellers, this will feel narrower than what you already use. For everyone else, it is a well-rated, long-running companion to a store you probably already visit. At a 4.8 average from tens of thousands of ratings, it has clearly done enough to stay installed on a lot of phones.

What's new in version 7.2.3

Thank you for using the DICK'S mobile app! We’ve squashed more bugs and made the overall experience better for you. Meet us in the app- where you'll never go out of style!