The LEGO Sports theme was based on a number of sporting activities that ran from 2000 until 2007. It featured basketball, football (soccer), hockey and Gravity Games extreme sports such as skateboarding or snowboarding. Most Sports theme sets included standard LEGO System elements and minifigures but also featured various new unique pieces to enable various playability functions that were characteristic to this theme and set it apart from other sports-related LEGO sets. The LEGO Group secured a number of licensing contracts which allowed LEGO to sell many of its sets with the official logos of major sports organizations, such as NBA, NHL, NHL Players' Association and Gravity Games as well as sporting good manufacturers like Adidas.
2004 LEGO Sets
2004 was a pivotal recovery year following financial losses in 2003. LEGO updated its color palette, introducing light nougat for licensed minifigures and brighter grays and browns. The company partnered with Ferrari under LEGO Racers and launched Knights’ Kingdom II, a story-driven reimagining of Castle. QUATRO expanded the preschool range, while World City, Orient Expedition, Spider-Man, and Gravity Games concluded. These shifts, along with strategic licensing, began LEGO’s long-term turnaround.