The Gym Industry Just Split in Two. Which Side Are You Building For?
Last week, two of the world's biggest gym companies reported their Q4 2025 numbers. Life Time posted $745 million in quarterly revenue (up 12.3%) and raised member dues by $10–30 a head. Planet Fitness added 1.1 million members across 2025 and called its new GLP-1 telehealth partnership with Ro the "most successful Perks program" in its history.
Same industry. Completely different businesses.
CNBC ran the numbers and landed on a phrase I think sums up the entire fitness market right now: a K-shaped economy. Premium goes up. Budget goes wide. And the operators stuck in the middle, without the data to know which direction they're actually heading, are the ones who should be paying the most attention.
The Premium Play: Longevity, Not Lifting
Life Time isn't really a gym company any more. Its Miora longevity clinics, offering everything from biomarker testing to metabolic health programmes, went from 2 locations to 7 or 8 in a single year. Management confirmed they're planning Miora space into every future club design. That's not an add-on. That's a format change.
Equinox is on a similar trajectory: $1.8 billion raised, a Function Health partnership offering 100+ biomarker tests, and its own GLP-1 protocol. These operators are competing on depth of experience, not breadth of equipment.
And then there's David Lloyd. This week they confirmed a £500 million investment programme and the acquisition of Aspria, a premium European wellness group with 10 sites across Germany, Italy, and Belgium: 51,000 members including 7,000 children, 15 new clubs, 50 new spa retreats, 60 padel courts. The deal completes in March.
That's not expansion, that's a statement!
The spatial challenge here is obvious. When your club is part gym, part spa, part clinic, part kids' zone, part padel court, how do you know which bits are actually earning their keep? A P&L tells you total revenue. It doesn't tell you which 200 square metres are subsidising which other 200 square metres.
The Budget Play: Volume, Pharmaceuticals, and a Very Big Net
Planet Fitness finished 2025 with 2,800+ locations and plans for 180–190 more in 2026. Their Mexico franchise now spans 47 locations across 14 states. The numbers are big. But the really interesting signal is the Ro partnership.
Studies suggest about 50% of GLP-1 users consider a gym membership. Many of them have never set foot in a gym before. They're coming in medically motivated, often dealing with gym intimidation, and they need a totally different onboarding experience. Planet Fitness positioned itself perfectly for this: low-cost, judgement-free, massive scale.
The Gym Group is taking a different angle on the volume play, raising its expansion target from 50 to 75 new sites over the next three years, with revenue hitting £244.9 million. JD Gyms just opened its 100th site, including its first inside the M25, and is reportedly piloting a small-footprint concept.
Small-footprint gyms are interesting because the margin for error is basically zero. Every piece of equipment has to justify its square footage. You can't afford to have three rowing machines gathering dust while members queue for the squat racks. That's not a hunch problem, that's a data problem.
The Uncomfortable Middle
If you're not a $223/month premium wellness destination and you're not a £15/month volume play, what are you?
The CMA's investigation into Gold's Gym UK this month is worth watching. It's one of the first enforcement actions under the new DMCC Act, specifically looking at whether a joining fee gets dropped into the sign-up process after the advertised price is shown. Drip pricing. The kind of thing that happens when you can't justify your membership cost with the experience you're actually delivering.
Across Europe, the consolidation is accelerating. Basic-Fit just integrated 491 Clever Fit clubs, taking its total to 2,150 across 12 countries, and is rebranding the owned locations to Basic-Fit by summer. Xponential is pushing Club Pilates into Belgium, Luxembourg, and Monaco. The mid-market gap is closing fast: operators either scale up or get absorbed.
In the Middle East, GymNation is scaling at a pace that makes UK operators look cautious. They entered Bahrain and sold 3,000 memberships in 24 hours. Second Bahrain site opens in April. The target is 60 locations and 300,000 members by the end of 2026, with a Riyadh HQ and senior operations hires underway. That's the kind of growth where knowing how your 34th gym compares to your 3rd isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between scaling and spiralling.
So What's the Actual Question?
Whether you're building longevity clinics into every club or squeezing maximum value out of a 12,000-square-foot box, the underlying question is the same: do you actually know how your space performs?
Not how many members you have. Not what your revenue per member is. But which zones pull traffic, which equipment sits idle, which class formats are actually changing behaviour, and which 200 square metres of your building could be earning three times what they're earning now.
The K-shape isn't just about pricing tiers. It's about information tiers. The operators pulling ahead, on both sides of the split, are the ones making decisions with data, not instinct. The ones falling behind are still walking the floor and guessing.
Cult.fit in India is about to IPO at a $2 billion valuation, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley appointed. When you're asking public market investors to price your business, "the gym feels busy" doesn't cut it. Smart Fit is opening 340+ new locations in 2026 while expanding its luxury Bio Ritmo brand into Chile, across 16 countries. Two brands, sixteen countries, fundamentally different spatial requirements under one roof.
These aren't future problems. They're Q1 2026 problems.
The Bit Nobody Wants to Hear
The gym industry just recorded its best year ever. UK penetration hit 16.6%. European membership reached 71.6 million. Record numbers everywhere.
But record membership masks the question that matters most: are those members getting value, and are you getting value from the space you've built for them?
Because the K is widening. And the operators in the middle, the ones without the data to know which direction they're heading, are the ones most at risk.
Your gym looks busy. But which half of the K are you on?
Tim Wade is Co-Founder of TwinLabs.ai, which turns existing CCTV into anonymous spatial intelligence for gym and leisure operators. No wearables. No sensors. No facial recognition. Just data that shows you how your space actually performs.
