3.5 Million exercise at Top 10
edelhelfer report “Leading Operators – Fitness in Germany” as of 31 December 2017
The sixth edelhelfer-analysis of the German fitness-market indicates, that the demand for fitness-offers continues to grow. By now, 10.6 Mio. persons train in fitness centers. The market continues to be dominated by discount chains, which could once more increase their number of customers. Among the Top-10 operator with the most members are six discount providers. Nevertheless, Micro- and also Premium-Facilities were able to grow during the last year. Overall EMS centers had a positive Year 2017.
As the sixth analysis about the leading fitness operators in Germany conducted by the consulting company edelhelfer from Mannheim shows, there are 3.5 Mio. persons exercising at the Top-10 operators. Hence, these operators could increase their number of members by 9.7 % during the last year.Measured by the number of members McFit is with 1.5 Mio. members by far the biggest operator in Europe. Besides the expansion of the core brand McFit as well as the club-formats John Reed and High5 in Germany and several European countries, the company is focusing more and more on a diversification of its offer. Only recently there were opened the first two women-fitness-centers as John Reed Women's Club in Berlin. Furthermore, after only offering virtual courses, since last year the McFit Global Group is offering courses which are led by professional trainers. The virtual training, which is produced by McFit, is sold under the brand CYBEROBICS® for end customers in an App as well as for other fitness-centers, companies and hotels in form of a B2B-solution. Further divisions of McFit are Qi² Sports Nutrition, the Trainings-App LOOX, an agency for sport-models and the planned fitness-center "The Mirai" in Oberhausen, which has an area of 55,000 m².
During the last year, there were no changes on the ranks two to four. clever fit, second biggest operator in Germany, was able to increase its number of members, too. With 650,000 members it is recording an increase in members of 18 %. Due to the ongoing restructuring, the number of members at Fitness First decreased slightly during the last year. FitX, which is due to its continued expansion ranked fifth, was growing strong last year.
All in all, the Top-20 operators measured by the number of centers run 2,051 fitness centers, an increase by 8 % compared to the year before. Women fitness operator Mrs. Sporty is with 365 centers the leading operator. Among the Top-20 there are six more Micro-Facility operators, which are mainly specialized on EMS-Training. This reflects the strong growth of this segment during the last years. Finally, the growth in the number of members as well as in facilities was mainly caused by the Discount-Segment. Nevertheless, the ongoing expansion of providers like Meridian Spa & Fitness, Holmes Place, ELEMENTS and Pfitzenmeier shows that also a positioning in the higher-priced field can work out.
The revenue per member depends strongly on the concept of the facility. Logically, premium operators realize the highest figure per member. Interestingly, the revenue per facility is pretty similar for operators in the Discount- and Medium-Segment. Amongst others, this is mainly caused by the big size of the facilities of the discount operators, which make it possible to gain relatively high revenues per facility despite the low membership fees. Operators of these segments earn approximately 1.5 Mio. EUR per facility. The personnel expanses reflect the concepts of the provider. Measured by the revenue respectively per member these costs are the highest in the Premium-Segment. This is in particular necessary to fulfill the high expectations of customers towards a Premium-Service.