The Walmart store at East Point Shopping Centre in Boksburg has achieved trading density 28.7% higher than the Game store it replaced, according to landlord SA Corporate Real Estate. The figure covers the four months to 30 June 2026 and appears in the property company's results for the six months to that date.

Walmart began trading at East Point in March, its third Walmart-branded outlet in South Africa.

Trading density measures sales per square metre, which makes this a clean comparison. Same floor space, same shopping centre, same catchment, different brand above the door, and 28.7% more revenue out of it. Massmart opened its first Walmart-branded store at Clearwater Mall in Roodepoort, replacing a long-struggling Game, followed by Fourways and then East Point.

At the East Point launch, the company said a further 21 stores were proposed across Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. In February, a Game employee told MyBroadband that 21 Game stores had been earmarked for closure, with branches in Amanzimtoti, Ballito, Richards Bay and Pietermaritzburg among them. Massmart has said it has no plans to close the Game brand entirely.

Two caveats. This is one store over four months, so it is a strong signal rather than proof. And the rollout appears to have slowed, because MyBroadband asked Massmart in July about its 2026 launch plans and was told there was no further communication on upcoming stores.

MyBroadband reported the trading density figure and noted the Walmart strategy appears to have displaced an earlier plan to convert underperforming Game stores into small-format Makro outlets.

SA Corporate Real Estate said Walmart's arrival has created opportunities to improve the wider tenant mix, and that management is pursuing an upmarket coffee offering, additional children's entertainment and complementary athleisure brands. Walmart International announced in September 2025 that it would open Walmart-branded stores here, partnering with South African suppliers and entrepreneurs to bring its low prices to the market.

The landlord's reaction is more revealing than the sales number. One anchor tenant changed, and SA Corporate is now chasing upmarket coffee, children's entertainment and athleisure brands for the rest of the centre. That is a property company repositioning an entire tenant mix on the strength of four months of till data, because the anchor determines who walks through the doors and therefore what every other tenant in the building can sell.

If you trade from a shopping centre, your anchor is a bigger input into your revenue than your own marketing, and you generally have no say in it. It also says something about the broader retail picture. Physical retail is not dying here so much as being re-sorted, with TFG closing stores while online reaches a tenth of all retail turnover. The same square metre can be worth 28.7% more with a different name on it.

You might also like our piece on how H&M South Africa keeps opening while its group shuts stores, Shoprite buying Vida e Caffè to reach on-the-go spend, and how Shoprite's market cap doubled off Sixty60.

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