The newly released Franchise Times Top 400 ranking illustrates in stark detail the impact COVID-19 pandemic shutdown orders, capacity limits and the behavior of cautious consumers had on fitness franchises in 2020.
Overall sales for the segment dropped to $5.8 billion last year. That’s a 23.8 percent decline as all but one of the gym brands suffered sales losses, according to the Top 400, which ranks the largest U.S.-based franchises by global systemwide sales. Devan Kline is CEO of the lone grower in fitness, Burn Boot Camp, and said his franchise “did literally everything we could” to keep members.
“We threw out all the rules and basically said, meet your members where they are,” said Kline. That meant live stream workouts, classes in parking lots and the creation of virtual platform Burn Boot Camp On Demand. “But honestly, our membership really stepped up,” he said of most locations only seeing a membership decline of about 15 percent.
Burn Boot Camp CEO Devan Kline says gym members were "impressed with the way we handled COVID," which led to better member retention.
Burn Boot Camp posted $109 million in sales in 2020, up 12.2 percent compared to the year before, from 281 locations. That unit count total is up 16 percent for the North Carolina-based brand.
Burn Boot Camp, which Kline founded in 2012 with wife Morgan, had a plethora of digital workout content available before the pandemic, but “we weren’t monetizing the platform,” he said. The company created its on-demand offering as a supplement to in-gym workouts and it can also stand alone as a membership level, said Kline, though he emphasized Burn remains focused on its in-person studio fitness model as it grows.
“You need a community of people to push you,” he said. “That community fitness boom is still coming.”
Elsewhere in the segment, Crunch Fitness makes its Top 400 debut at No. 110 with $700 million in systemwide sales from 380 units. Ben Midgley is CEO of the big-box, low-cost gym franchise and said the company immediately expanded its Crunch Live digital offering, which before the pandemic was provided only to members at a higher-priced level.
“We ended up losing only 2 percent of our members, which was shocking. …There’s a really high sense of customer loyalty. I can’t explain it any other way,” Midgley said.
When locations began reopening, he continued, “sales were roughly three times what they were” as those who were ready to get out of the house, “they went back to the gym.” Midgley also noted Crunch offers more variety in its clubs than some of its fellow big-box competitors.
“We’ve got classes, we’ve got the HIIT Zone,” he said, naming the brand’s high intensity interval training offering. And all along Crunch emphasized its focus on health and safety, with enhanced cleaning protocols and air filtration upgrades.
Planet Fitness, the largest brand in the segment by systemwide sales, didn’t fare well in 2020. A year after it topped the $3 billion mark, sales dropped 25 percent to $2.4 billion. It did add 123 net new units. Sales for Anytime Fitness, the second largest gym franchise, fell 23.8 percent, to $1.4 billion, while its unit count increased by 2.2 percent.
Sales Performance: Fitness
Top 3
| Burn Boot Camp | $109M | +12.2% |
| Orangetheory Fitness | $1.1B | -16% |
| Pure Barre | $134M | -22.6% |
Bottom 3
| CycleBar | $59M | -25.1% |
| Snap Fitness | $260M | -41% |
| 9Round | $87M | -42.6% |