Mike Ashley admits covert video toppled Peter Cowgill
Mike Ashley admitted he arranged covert video of Peter Cowgill, saying associates in his employ recorded footage that helped bring down the JD Sports chair. The admission turns a private retail feud into a record of how a surveillance move helped trigger regulatory action, fines of almost £5m and Cowgill’s ouster.
Ashley said he was not hiding from wanting to topple Cowgill. He said, “shouldn’t have been in the car park and maybe I shouldn’t have been in the bushes” and added, “I’m not Mary Poppins – when you get in a fight with me, I’ll come back at you. But I’m not devil incarnate.”
2021 JD Sports Footasylum footage
In 2021, Cowgill was secretly filmed in a car talking with Footasylum boss Barry Bown while JD Sports was in the process of acquiring Footasylum. During that process, JD Sports and Footasylum were not allowed to share commercially sensitive information, and the covert recording became the basis for a regulatory investigation.
The sequence matters for anyone watching UK retail governance because the tape did not stay a private grievance. Ashley said Cowgill “knew what I was going to do – so then why did he do it?” and Cowgill later described the recorder as a “key competitor,” while saying the episode went “to go to those lengths.”
Almost £5m in fines
Almost £5m in penalties followed after the competition watchdog investigated the footage. Cowgill was then ousted from JD Sports after the fallout, leaving the chain without the chair who had been at the center of the acquisition dispute.
The financial hit landed on both sides of the deal process. The tape exposed a breach risk around commercially sensitive information, and the fines showed the watchdog treated the episode as more than a row between rivals.
Frasers Group since 2022
In 2022, Ashley stepped down as chief executive of Frasers Group, but he still retains a 73% stake in the company. He built the business from a single sports store in Maidenhead, England, in 1982 with £10,000 from his parents, and he remains one of the most prominent and unorthodox figures on the UK high street.
For Frasers investors, the practical takeaway is simple: Ashley still has controlling influence through that 73% stake, even after leaving the chief executive role. For JD Sports shareholders, the episode leaves a cleaner lesson in how a private rivalry can spill into a regulatory case and cost nearly £5m before it ends in a boardroom departure.
