Key takeaways
- Bass Pro Shops completed its acquisition of Cabela's on 25 September 2017 at $61.50 per share in cash, an aggregate transaction value of approximately $5.0 billion, per Cabela's own Form 8-K.
- That was not the original price. The merger agreement signed on 3 October 2016 was amended on 17 April 2017, and the completed deal came in below the terms first announced.
- The obstacle was a bank. Cabela's wholly owned World's Foremost Bank had to be broken up and sold before the merger could close, with Synovus Bank taking assets and roughly $1.2 billion in deposits, then selling the credit card book to Capital One.
- The bank transaction was engineered to close immediately prior to the Bass Pro merger. The retail deal was contingent on the banking deal.
- Capital One became the exclusive issuer of the Cabela's CLUB Visa under a 10-year program agreement, so the loyalty card at the centre of Cabela's business is now run by a company that does not own Cabela's.
- Cabela's was founded in 1961 by Dick, Mary and Jim Cabela, from a kitchen table in Chappell, Nebraska. The CABELA'S trademark is now owned by Cabela's LLC, recorded in Springfield, Bass Pro's home city, not Sidney, Nebraska.
This article is based on primary sources: Cabela's Incorporated's Form 8-K exhibits filed with the SEC on 17 April 2017 and 25 September 2017, and the USPTO Trademark Status and Document Retrieval record for CABELA'S Reg. No. 6321557, retrieved 16 July 2026. Full source list at the bottom.
Who owns Cabela's right now?
Bass Pro Shops. More precisely, Cabela's is a privately held business inside the Bass Pro group, and because that group is private there are no proxy statements or 10-Ks to read. The ownership answer has to be assembled from the filings Cabela's made while it was still public, and from the trademark register afterwards.
The Form 8-K exhibit filed on 25 September 2017 is the document that ends Cabela's as a public company. It states that Bass Pro Shops "acquired Cabela's for $61.50 per share in cash, representing an aggregate transaction value of approximately $5.0 billion," and that "Cabela's common stock will no longer be listed for trading on the New York Stock Exchange." Cabela's traded as NYSE: CAB until that day.
| Layer | Entity | What it holds | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ultimate owner | Johnny Morris | Majority owner of Bass Pro, founder and CEO | Ongoing |
| Parent group | Bass Pro Shops | 100% of Cabela's, acquired for ~$5.0bn | 25 Sep. 2017 |
| Trademark owner | Cabela's LLC | CABELA'S Reg. No. 6321557, live | Registered 13 Apr. 2021 |
| Former public entity | Cabela's Incorporated (NYSE: CAB) | Delisted on completion | Ended 25 Sep. 2017 |
| Credit card issuer | Capital One | Exclusive Cabela's CLUB Visa issuer, 10-year agreement | From 2017 |
Two details in that table are doing more work than they look.
First, the trademark. Per the USPTO record, CABELA'S Reg. No. 6321557 is live, registered on 13 April 2021, and owned by Cabela's LLC, recorded at 2500 East Kearney Street, Springfield. Cabela's Incorporated was a Nebraska company headquartered in Sidney. The entity that owns the name today is registered in Bass Pro's home city, and it is an LLC rather than the old incorporated entity. The corporate shell that the Cabela family built no longer holds the Cabela name.
Second, the card. Capital One issues the Cabela's CLUB Visa, not Cabela's and not Bass Pro. That matters more here than it would at most retailers, because the CLUB card was not a marketing accessory at Cabela's. It was the business.
Who controls Cabela's?
Bass Pro controls the retail operation outright. But the interesting control question is the one the merger had to solve, and it is why this deal took almost a year.
Cabela's owned a bank. World's Foremost Bank, a wholly owned subsidiary, issued the Cabela's CLUB Visa and held the deposits behind it. That made Cabela's, legally, a bank holding company, and it meant Bass Pro could not simply buy the retailer: doing so would have dragged a private outdoor retailer into federal bank regulation.
So the bank had to be taken apart first. The 8-K exhibit of 17 April 2017 sets out the machinery. Synovus Bank, a subsidiary of Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE: SNV), would "acquire certain assets and assume certain liabilities of the Bank, including deposits totaling approximately $1.2 billion." Synovus would then immediately sell the bank's credit card assets to Capital One and keep the deposits. Capital One would become the exclusive issuing partner of the Cabela's CLUB Visa under a ten-year agreement, and would keep running the CLUB servicing centre in Lincoln, Nebraska.
The sequencing is the giveaway: "The Bank transaction will close immediately prior to the closing of the Bass Pro Shops merger." Cabela's had to stop being a bank, by minutes, before it could be bought.
And the same filing that solved the bank problem repriced the deal. It announced that Cabela's "has amended the terms of the definitive merger agreement signed on October 3, 2016," and that under the amended agreement Bass Pro would pay $61.50 per share. The deal announced in October 2016 was reported at the time at a higher per-share price, around $65.50; the deal that closed paid $61.50. Between the two sat six months of regulatory difficulty over a credit card bank in Nebraska.
Cabela's then-CEO Tommy Millner framed the revision as progress, saying it "allows us to look ahead with greater certainty toward the completion of our merger." That is the language of a deal that had been at risk.
Founders: who started Cabela's?
The 8-K itself contains the cleanest statement of the origin, which is unusual for an SEC filing: "Cabela's dates back to 1961 when Dick, Mary and Jim Cabela began a mail order service for outdoor products around their kitchen table in Chappell, Nebraska."
Three founders, two brothers and a wife, one kitchen table, in a Nebraska town of a few hundred people. By the time of the sale the company operated 89 stores and was known as the World's Foremost Outfitter, a trademarked phrase that also gave the bank its name.
The buyer's origin story rhymes. Bass Pro Shops was "founded in 1972 when avid young angler Johnny Morris began selling tackle out of his father's liquor store in Springfield, Missouri." Two mail-order-and-back-room outfits, founded eleven years apart, merged fifty-six years later in a $5 billion transaction. Neither family sold to a conglomerate. One family business bought the other.
Dick Cabela died in 2014, three years before the sale.
Ownership history: the timeline
| Date | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1961 | Dick, Mary and Jim Cabela start a mail order outdoor business in Chappell, Nebraska | Cabela's 8-K, 25 Sep. 2017 |
| 1972 | Johnny Morris begins selling tackle in his father's Springfield, Missouri liquor store | Cabela's 8-K, 25 Sep. 2017 |
| 2004 | Cabela's Incorporated goes public on the NYSE as CAB | Contemporaneous reporting |
| 3 Oct. 2016 | Cabela's and Bass Pro sign a definitive merger agreement | Cabela's 8-K, 17 Apr. 2017 |
| 17 Apr. 2017 | Amended merger agreement at $61.50 per share, plus Bank Transaction Agreements with Synovus and Capital One | Cabela's 8-K, 17 Apr. 2017 |
| 25 Sep. 2017 | Bass Pro completes the acquisition; Synovus completes the World's Foremost Bank transaction for ~$1.2bn; CAB delists | Cabela's 8-K, 25 Sep. 2017 |
| 13 Apr. 2021 | CABELA'S Reg. No. 6321557 registers to Cabela's LLC, recorded in Springfield | USPTO TSDR, Serial 90137181 |
What changed in the last 18 months
For an ownership article, the honest answer is nothing verifiable, and that is a function of the structure rather than a gap in the reporting.
Bass Pro is private. Cabela's is private within it. There is no proxy statement, no 10-K, no Exhibit 21, no beneficial ownership table. Once CAB delisted on 25 September 2017, the disclosure obligations that make an article like this checkable simply ended. The last authoritative ownership documents about Cabela's are nine years old, and they describe the transaction that removed Cabela's from public view.
What can still be checked is the trademark register, and it shows continuity: CABELA'S Reg. No. 6321557 remains live and remains with Cabela's LLC. No assignment, no change of owner, no lapse.
I am not going to fill the rest of this section with secondary reports about store counts or strategy. If the ownership has changed, the evidence would appear either in a trademark assignment or in a state registry filing, and neither shows one.
So who really owns Cabela's?
The trivia answer, "Bass Pro Shops," is correct as of 25 September 2017 and still correct today.
The structure answer is more specific and more interesting. Cabela's is a private business inside a private group controlled by one man, Johnny Morris, who founded Bass Pro in a liquor store in 1972. The brand name sits in Cabela's LLC. The retail operation sits under Bass Pro. And the piece of Cabela's that made the whole deal difficult, the bank, does not sit with either of them: its deposits went to Synovus, its credit card book went to Capital One, and Capital One now runs the CLUB Visa under a ten-year deal signed in 2017.
So the honest map of "Cabela's" today is three companies, not one. Bass Pro owns the stores and the name. Capital One owns the customer relationship that the CLUB card represents. And Synovus took the deposits. The $5 billion headline describes only the first of those.
That is also the part that explains the price. Bass Pro did not pay $61.50 instead of $65.50 because it negotiated harder. It paid less because what it was buying got smaller: the bank came out before the deal went through.
FAQ
Who owns Cabela's now?
Bass Pro Shops, which completed its acquisition on 25 September 2017 for $61.50 per share, roughly $5.0 billion. Bass Pro is privately held, and its founder Johnny Morris is the majority owner. Cabela's is no longer publicly traded.
Is Cabela's still owned by the Cabela family?
No. The family founded it in 1961 and took it public in 2004, and it was sold to Bass Pro in 2017. Dick Cabela died in 2014, before the sale. The CABELA'S trademark is now held by Cabela's LLC, recorded at Bass Pro's Springfield address.
How much did Bass Pro pay for Cabela's?
$61.50 per share in cash, an aggregate transaction value of approximately $5.0 billion, per Cabela's Form 8-K of 25 September 2017. The original October 2016 agreement was amended in April 2017 to reach that price.
Why did the Cabela's deal take a year to close?
Cabela's owned World's Foremost Bank, which issued the Cabela's CLUB Visa. The bank had to be sold separately, with Synovus taking roughly $1.2 billion in deposits and Capital One taking the credit card assets, and that transaction had to close immediately before the merger.
Who issues the Cabela's CLUB credit card?
Capital One, as exclusive issuing partner under a 10-year program agreement dating from the 2017 transaction. Neither Cabela's nor Bass Pro issues it.
Are Bass Pro and Cabela's the same company?
They are the same ownership group but remain separate brands and store banners. Bass Pro acquired Cabela's; it did not merge the names.
What I'm watching next
The CLUB Visa agreement. It was a ten-year deal announced in April 2017, which puts its natural expiry around 2027, inside the next eighteen months. Whether Capital One renews, or whether Bass Pro brings the card programme back in-house, is the single largest known decision point in the Cabela's structure, and it is the one thing about this private company with a public clock on it.
Second, the trademark register. Cabela's LLC is the owner of record, and any reorganisation inside Bass Pro's holding structure would likely surface first as an assignment on Reg. No. 6321557. That is the cheapest available window into a company that no longer files.
Third, Sidney, Nebraska. The town's largest employer was bought and the head office function moved toward Springfield, which is visible even in the trademark record. The remaining question is whether any corporate presence stays, and that will show up in state registry filings rather than press releases.
Sources
1. Cabela's Incorporated, Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1, "Bass Pro Shops Completes Acquisition of Cabela's," 25 September 2017. SEC EDGAR. Establishes the completion date, the $61.50 per share price, the ~$5.0 billion value, the NYSE delisting, the Synovus and Capital One bank transactions, and the 1961 founding by Dick, Mary and Jim Cabela.
2. Cabela's Incorporated, Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1, "Cabela's Enters Into Revised Transaction Agreements in Connection with Bass Pro Shops Merger," 17 April 2017. SEC EDGAR. Establishes the 3 October 2016 original agreement, the amendment to $61.50, the ~$1.2 billion Synovus deposit transaction, the Capital One 10-year CLUB Visa agreement, and the closing sequence.
3. USPTO Trademark Status and Document Retrieval, CABELA'S, Reg. No. 6321557, Serial 90137181, filed 25 August 2020, registered 13 April 2021. TSDR record. Establishes Cabela's LLC as the current owner of record. Retrieved 16 July 2026.
4. Family Business Magazine, "Bass Pro Shops to acquire Cabela's". Article. Family-business trade coverage of the two founder-led companies.