In a statement published on the London Stock Exchange this morning, Sports Direct said it disagreed with the Competition and Markets Authority’s “estimates” it published last week as part of its investigation into the merger of JD Sports and Footasylum.

“The CMA has published inaccurate estimates of Sports Direct’s share of the supply of ‘sports-inspired casual apparel and also footwear’, both on an in-store and online basis, which wrongly suggest that Sports Direct would have a comparable share of supply to the merged parties”.

The statement goes on to say that Sports Direct “disagrees with these estimates” because they “substantially overstate its presence on each of the markets which are the subject” of the CMA investigation, and that it “does not have a meaningful, if any, presence in these markets”.