Academy Sports Clearance in 2026: What 51,000 Tracked Prices Say About the Markdowns
Academy Sports + Outdoors has about 300 stores across the South and Midwest and a clearance section that its own help page says rotates weekly. Beyond that, public information is thin: coupon sites repeat “up to 75% off” and the Academy app tells you a price, not whether it is about to change.
We started tracking Academy’s full online catalog at the end of August 2026. Every three hours we re-check about 51,000 products and log every price change. This is what the first weeks of data show. Where the sample is still small we say so.
Academy’s clearance has a shape: the 60% band
The first thing that stands out is how concentrated the discounts are. Of the 10,571 items currently priced below list:
| Discount off list | Items |
|---|---|
| 25% to 39% | 1,163 |
| 40% to 59% | 1,500 |
| 60% to 69% | 4,383 |
| 70% or more | 568 |
Forty-one percent of everything on discount sits in the 60 to 69% band. That is not how a smooth markdown ladder looks. It looks like a policy: Academy clears merchandise by setting it to about 60% off in one move rather than stepping it down 15% at a time the way Dick’s does.
It also means “up to 75% off” undersells the middle. If an item is on clearance at Academy, the most likely price is around 60% off, and it probably went there directly.
Seen in the log: a YETI Hopper M30 soft cooler listed at $350 went to a $280 promo price, then straight to $139.98, which is 60% off list. A YETI Tundra 45 sits at $129.98 from $325. A Hopper Flip 12 at $92.48 from $250. All in the same band, all on discontinued colors.
Most “price changes” at Academy are sales ending, not starting
We logged 28,379 price movements at Academy over the tracking window. Only 1,270 were decreases. The other 27,109 were increases, and 25,012 of those were the price going straight back to full list.
That ratio is unusual. At Dick’s, drops and rises are roughly even. At Newegg they are roughly even. At Academy, increases outnumber decreases twenty to one.
The explanation is Academy’s promo structure. Its “Hot Deals” and weekly “Big Fun Deals” are time-boxed: a price goes down for a few days, then snaps back to list. What our log is seeing is the end of those windows, over and over. A markdown at Academy is not a slope you can wait out. It is a window that closes.
Practical consequence: if you see an Academy item at a price you like, the historical odds say it returns to list rather than getting cheaper. The 60% clearance band is stickier than the promo prices, but the promo prices are the ones that vanish.
Markdowns land on Saturday (early data)
Day of the week for the price drops we have logged so far:
| Day | Price drops | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Saturday | 395 | 53% |
| Thursday | 111 | 15% |
| Friday | 108 | 15% |
| Tuesday | 63 | 8% |
| Monday | 60 | 8% |
| Sunday | 4 | 1% |
| Wednesday | 1 | 0% |
This covers seven days of drop history, so treat it as a first reading rather than a rule. But a 53% Saturday share with Sunday and Wednesday near zero is a strong enough signal to plan around. Academy’s own help page says clearance rotates weekly. Our data says that rotation lands on Saturday, with a Thursday-Friday lead-in for some items.
We will re-measure this once the log has a couple of months behind it. If the Saturday pattern holds it makes Academy the odd one out: Dick’s, Golf Galaxy and Nordstrom Rack mark down on Friday, Walmart and Best Buy on Thursday.
Where the deep discounts are
Counting live items at 40% off or deeper by department:
| Department | Items 40%+ off | Avg discount |
|---|---|---|
| Fan Shop | 1,646 | 65% |
| Outdoors | 1,359 | 62% |
| Sports | 1,093 | 59% |
| Men’s | 610 | 62% |
| Kids | 557 | 64% |
| Women’s | 411 | 63% |
| Fitness | 232 | 60% |
Fan shop leads for the same reason it does everywhere: licensed team gear expires. Academy is heavy on college and Texas-market teams, so end-of-season college apparel is the fastest route to the deep end.
By brand, Nike has 866 items at 40% off or more, then ‘47 at 407, Academy’s house brand BCG at 340, Magellan Outdoors (another house brand) at 330, New Era at 197, adidas and Under Armour at 167 each, Columbia at 119 and Hornady at 101. The two house brands together are nearly 700 items, which matters because house-brand clearance at Academy tends not to come back in stock.
The fake 90% off problem
Here is the trap to know about before you get excited about a “93% off YETI” listing.
Academy’s catalog data sometimes carries the wrong list price on an accessory. A $25 YETI Roadie cooler divider showed a list price of $375, which is the price of the cooler it fits, producing a fake 93% discount. The product page repeats the bad number. Only the price block tied to that specific SKU is correct.
We saw enough of these that every Academy item our scanner flags at 75% off or more now gets a second check against the product page before it is shown to anyone. Coupon aggregators and browser extensions that read the catalog price alone will keep showing you $375 dividers. When an Academy discount looks too good, check whether the list price belongs to a different product in the same family.
A note on what the Academy app cannot tell you
The Academy app and site show a current price. They do not show:
- Whether the price is a time-boxed promo (likely to snap back) or clearance (likely to stay)
- What the previous price was
- Whether an item at 60% off just got there or has been sitting for weeks
That third one matters for stock. Clearance at Academy is tied to remaining inventory of discontinued items, and once an item is at its 60% band the question is how much is left, not whether it will get cheaper.
How to shop Academy clearance with this in mind
- Check Saturday. That is when the weekly rotation appears, based on early data.
- Treat promo prices as expiring, not improving. Twenty to one, the next move is back up.
- Treat the 60% band as the clearance floor. Very little goes deeper except fan gear and odd sizes.
- Verify anything above 75% off against the product page price for that exact SKU.
- Watch house brands. BCG and Magellan clearance does not restock.
We log every Academy price change automatically and sort the catalog by biggest recent drop at the Academy Sports price tracker. For how Academy’s Saturday rotation compares to other sporting goods and big-box chains, see the markdown day-of-week comparison and the Dick’s Sporting Goods markdown schedule.