This was a week about measurement. Not one story about a new marketing gimmick, and three separate ones putting hard numbers on retention — including the first credible figure I have seen for how long the average fitness member anywhere in the world actually stays, and the first dataset that says out loud how many months of warning you get before a member quits. Add the broker data on what a single-location studio actually sells for, and the week hands you an uncomfortable alignment: the things that determine what your school is worth are the same things you probably do not measure.
Elsewhere: Deloitte tells European operators their problem is real estate, not money. Smart Fit buys into spas in Brazil. A 15,000-square-metre club opens in Dubai with gymnastics, parkour and youth academies — and no martial arts anywhere on its published list of disciplines. And IMG Academy put fifty years of its methodology into a ten-dollar app.
The industry’s median member lasts 13 months
The Health & Fitness Association’s Global Retention Study analysed more than 12 million membership accounts across 38 countries and found a median member tenure of 13 months. The figure surfaced on 21 October alongside news that HFA is folding its European conference together with the Fitness Technology Summit, with the combined European Congress set for London on 25–26 May 2027 and the HFA Show in Las Vegas on 10–12 March 2027. The same reporting carried a technology survey of 68 fitness operators: 78% were testing or deploying AI, only 18% had it running at scale, and 70% named systems integration as the obstacle. Athletech News, 21 October 2026.
Stephen: Thirteen months. Twelve million accounts, thirty-eight countries, and the middle of the market loses the member inside the second year. Sit with that, because it is the number the whole fitness industry is built to tolerate and you are not. A student who leaves at thirteen months never reaches black belt, never brings a sibling, never becomes the parent who tells four other parents. At a $250 average student value, that member is worth $3,250 and then gone. At thirty-six months they are worth $9,000 and they recruit. Same enrollment, same marketing spend, three times the business. The fitness industry has decided thirteen months is normal. Do not import their normal.
You get three to eight months of warning before a member quits
Mariana Tek data reported on 23 October found measurable behaviour changes appearing three to eight months before a cancellation or downgrade. Among members who cancelled, average monthly visits fell from 6.2 three months out to 5.4 in the final month, with monthly spend down 11%. The long-tenured members were the stark case: visits peaked at 7.4 a month eight months before they downgraded, then fell 39% to 4.5 by the month before the change, with spending down 24% over the same stretch. In the first month after downgrading, visits fell another 58% and revenue 57%. Members under a year showed a 14% visit decline in the three months before a downgrade. Visit frequency was the strongest warning sign, spend second; the data does not establish why members disengaged. Athletech News, 23 October 2026.
Stephen: I have been saying for forty years that the attendance card is the crystal ball. Here is somebody’s data finally saying it with decimal points. Read that long-tenured curve again — eight months of decline before they tell you. Eight months in which a phone call, a goal conversation and a stripe would have turned it around, and nobody made the call because nobody was looking at the card. And note which member was most at risk: the loyal one. The one you stopped worrying about because they had been there three years. That is the most expensive blind spot in your building.
A single-location studio sells for about two times earnings
Mitch McGinley of Boutique Fitness Broker published his firm’s actual numbers on 21 October: 35 transactions since the start of 2023, 45 franchise and independent studios sold, roughly $23.8 million in total transaction value. Single-location studios with $100,000 or more in earnings trade at 2x to 3x, with a median near 2x. Multi-location groups with a real management layer and $400,000-plus in earnings trade at 3.5x to 4.5x. A 5x has appeared twice in more than 75 career deals. SBA 7(a) financing requires 10% down and a 1.25x debt-service coverage minimum, which caps SBA-funded deals around 3x to 3.5x — and acquisitions of $3 million or more now require a quality-of-earnings review under rules effective 1 October 2026. Median time from listing to signed letter of intent was about three months, and just over five months to close. Buyers prioritised retention, instructor depth, lease terms, clean books matching tax returns, and whether the owner was off the teaching schedule. Athletech News, 21 October 2026.
Stephen: Last week the headline was a chain buying another chain at 7.8 times earnings. Here is the arithmetic for the rest of us, from a man publishing his own closed deals instead of theorising: two times. And look at the four things buyers actually underwrite — retention, instructor depth, lease, clean books. Three of those four are things you build in the next twelve months or you do not. The gap between 2x and 4x is not a negotiating tactic. It is a management layer and a retention number, and both take a year of unglamorous work.
NASM: the staffing problem is readiness, not headcount
NASM research reported on 22 October argues there is no trainer shortage, only a development failure. Its figures: 52% of gym employees have three years or less of industry experience, while 64% of owners and managers have more than a decade. And 59% of gym employees rate continuing-education reimbursement and support as poor or nonexistent. David Van Daff, NASM’s VP of industry development and public affairs, said clients increasingly want support beyond traditional fitness — recovery, longevity, nutrition, sleep — and that owners and managers are significantly more likely than their employees to hold advanced specialisations. Athletech News, 22 October 2026. The piece is a partnership with NASM, which sells certifications; read the certification claims with that in mind.
Stephen: Fifty-nine percent say their employer offers nothing for their development, and then owners complain they cannot find good instructors. Those two facts are the same fact. I have said it since the eighties: you grow your leadership from inside, you never import a star and put them on a pedestal, and the way you grow them is a scheduled, paid, relentless training program for your own people. The gap between the 64% of owners with a decade in and the 52% of staff with three years or less is not a labour market. It is a succession plan you have not written.
IMG Academy put fifty years of methodology into a $10 app
IMG Academy announced IMG Academy+ on 19 October: a three-tier digital platform built on its Bradenton campus methodology, aimed at student-athletes from age eight and explicitly at families who cannot afford Bradenton tuition or live too far away. The entry tier is $10 a month for an on-demand library of more than 1,000 pieces of content on leadership, habit building and confidence. Higher tiers add live one-to-one coaching in nutrition and mental performance, and college-recruiting tools through NCSA connected to a network of more than 40,000 college coaches, with recruiting folded into the app by Q1 2027. Context from the same report: American families spend roughly $54 billion a year on children’s sports and recreation, and the average family spent $1,016 on one child’s primary sport in 2024, up 46% since 2019 (Aspen Institute Project Play). Youth Sports Business Report, 20 October 2026.
Stephen: Here’s reality: a nationally known brand just priced character development, confidence and habit building at ten dollars a month and pointed it at the parents of eight-year-olds. That is the exact language on the wall of your lobby. If your answer to “why should I pay you $200 a month” is a list of virtues, you are now competing with a ten-dollar app that promises the same virtues. It cannot do what you do — a screen cannot put a nervous seven-year-old in front of thirty people and have her break a board — but it can take the words. Stop selling the words. Sell the room, the instructor who knows her name, and the belt she earns in twelve weeks.
Perfect Game built a media platform aimed squarely at mothers
Perfect Game, the youth baseball and softball platform, launched PG Moms on 8 October, debuting it at the WWBA World Championship in Jupiter, Florida. It is anchored by The Perfect Mom Podcast, hosted by Evelyn Lozada, with a national group of mothers producing content about their families’ event experiences, distributed through Perfect Game’s social channels, the free PGTV app and PerfectGame.TV. Perfect Game CMO Kash Shaikh framed it around the support system behind every athlete, “and at its center is someone named Mom.” The reporting notes mothers influence most purchasing decisions in youth baseball — travel, lodging, equipment, apparel, registration — and cites a 2026 EMARKETER and DICK’S Media finding that 84% of sports parents say their role influences purchases. Youth Sports Business Report, 18 October 2026.
Stephen: Travel baseball built a content vertical, hired a host and bought distribution to talk to the mother who writes the cheque. Meanwhile the typical martial arts website still opens with the owner’s lineage and a list of styles. I have said this a thousand times and I will say it again: the mother of a seven-year-old does not care about your style. She cares about her kid, about what other mothers say, and about an easy way to raise her hand. Perfect Game just spent real money proving it. Go look at your home page and count how many words pass before you speak to her.
$60 million of youth basketball is going up in downtown Phoenix
The Phoenix Suns, Phoenix Mercury and Valley of the Sun YMCA announced on 19 October a $60 million, three-storey, 55,000-square-foot youth basketball facility in downtown Phoenix, with roughly 60 affordable housing units in three further storeys above it, developed with VanTrust Real Estate. It will carry three courts — one NBA-size, two high-school-size — for camps, clinics and tournaments, plus tutoring, internships, onsite counsellors and coaches, nutrition classes and a full-service cafe, aimed at families in central and south Phoenix. Groundbreaking is planned for NBA All-Star Weekend in February 2027, opening in 2029. Youth Sports Business Report, 24 October 2026.
Stephen: Tutoring, counsellors, nutrition, career development, a cafe, and housing on top. That is not a gym, it is an answer to the working parent’s entire four-to-seven p.m. problem. You have until 2029 in Phoenix and considerably less time everywhere else, because this model is spreading. The defensible position is not cheaper classes. It is being the place that solves the afternoon: pickup, homework, dinner handled, character taught, and a parent who knows exactly where her child is at 4:30.
Texas moves toward sanctioning girls flag football
The University Interscholastic League’s legislative council approved a girls flag football pilot program on 19 October, limited to no more than two conferences and beginning in the 2028–29 school year; it still needs final approval from the Texas Commissioner of Education. A UIL superintendent survey found 165 Texas schools already offer girls flag football, and 52% of Class 6A and 5A superintendents support sanctioning it. Participation in the Dallas Cowboys’ and Houston Texans’ school-based flag programs is expected to exceed 270 schools and about 6,000 athletes by 2027, and by autumn 2027 some 25 states will have sanctioned the sport at high-school level. Youth Sports Business Report, 20 October 2026.
Stephen: I do not cover sport here, I cover competition for a family’s calendar and wallet — and a free, school-based, bus-provided option for girls in twenty-five states is exactly that. Twenty-five states in under two years is fast. Your exposure is the eleven-to-fourteen-year-old girl, which is already your leakiest age bracket. The counter is not to complain about school sport. It is to own the season it does not: run your leadership team, your instructor-track and your family programs so that the girl who plays flag in the autumn is still on your mat in January, and her mother still has a reason to pay you year-round.
Deloitte to European operators: your constraint is sites, not capital
Presenting Deloitte research at HCM Invest in London on 21 October, Steffen Gausselmann reported that the main constraint on fitness-sector growth is access to suitable, economically viable sites, followed by rising costs and the operational capacity to expand without losing standards. Capital, he said, is generally available but selective: investors favour proven models, transparent information and evidence of sustainable returns. More money would speed expansion but would not remove the structural constraints, and operators must keep reinvesting in existing clubs to protect member experience, retention and cash flow. The success factors named were a clear customer proposition, disciplined site selection, strong club-level economics, effective use of member data, and systems that can carry expansion. The research focused on large operators. Health Club Management, 21 October 2026.
Stephen: Note what the consultants put at the top of the list for the big operators: the lease. Not the ad budget. If you are thinking about a second location, that is your warning that the single highest-leverage decision you will make in the next three years is which four walls you sign for, and the second is whether you have a person who can run the first school without you in it. “Operational capacity to expand without losing standards” is consultant-speak for the thing I keep telling you — build the bench before you build the building.
Brazil: Smart Fit buys into recovery
Smart Fit, the Brazilian fitness group that operates clubs across Latin America, agreed on 16 October to acquire up to 20% of the total and voting share capital of Brazilian massage and wellness chain Buddha Spa for up to R$32 million (about US$6.3 million). On completion, a shareholders’ agreement would give Smart Fit a call option over a further 10 percentage points, which would take its holding to 30%. Final stake and price are still to be determined and the transaction remains subject to conditions. Health Club Management, 16 October 2026.
Stephen: A budget-price operator buying a minority stake in recovery services is a tell about where the margin is: not in the membership, in what the member buys after it. You have the same opportunity and almost none of you work it. Average student value of $100 a month when it should be $250 to $300 is not a tuition problem alone — it is everything you never built around the tuition. Private lessons, leadership team, gear, testing, camps, a second program for the parent standing in your lobby four nights a week.
Dubai: a 15,000-square-metre club built around padel, basketball and kids’ academies
Fadi El Khatib soft-launched Club 15 in Al Quoz, Dubai, reported 20 October: a 15,000-square-metre sports and lifestyle destination with seven padel courts, three full-sized basketball courts, a two-storey 5,700-square-metre gym, Reformer Pilates and other studios, a 25-metre pool, ice baths, infrared sauna, rooftop training space and an on-site physiotherapy clinic — plus kids’ facilities, gymnastics, parkour and youth academies. Membership pricing was still being finalised. El Khatib told The National that people are overdoing things, that the answer is to keep it simple and listen to your body rather than chase social-media trends, and that traditional gym training cannot be replaced by AI tools or biohacking. The National, 20 October 2026.
Stephen: Gymnastics, parkour, youth academies, physiotherapy — and martial arts is not on the list. In a market with that much money chasing children’s activity, that is either an oversight or an opening, and for whoever gets there first it is an opening. If you are operating in the Gulf, the lesson is not to build 15,000 square metres. It is that the premium children’s-activity buyer in that market is being courted hard by everybody except us.
UK: obesity drugs are rewriting the weight-loss sales pitch
Speaking at the HCM Summit on 22 October, Dr Hussain Al-Zubaidi told operators that obesity medications are reshaping the weight-management market and that gyms must change what they sell. He cited a survey in which 72% of respondents reported more physical activity during treatment, 20% more strength-based exercise and 16% starting personal training, and noted that wearable data suggests moderate-to-vigorous activity can fall slightly during treatment. He put UK overweight-or-obesity prevalence at an estimated 60–70%, called sensationalised claims of 20–40% lean-mass loss unreliable, and expects NHS referral opportunities from around summer 2028. His advice: measure and sell outcomes such as strength, breathing, blood pressure, daily function and mental wellbeing rather than weight loss; train staff in obesity physiology and stigma; and start building evidence now with private clients rather than waiting for referrals. Health Club Management, 22 October 2026.
Stephen: Sixteen percent of people on these medications started personal training. That is an adult market walking toward instruction, and the schools running fitness kickboxing and adult programs should notice. But read the real instruction in that talk: stop selling the scale, sell capability. We have been doing that for fifty years — it is called a belt system. Short-term measurable goals, verified in front of witnesses, every three months. The medical profession just arrived at our curriculum from the other direction.
Also worth two minutes
ACSM published its 21st annual trends report on 20 October, and the movement in it matters more than the top spot. Wearable technology held number one and mobile exercise apps came second, but group fitness classes jumped from 13th to 7th — one of the largest moves on the list — and traditional strength training rose two places to 5th. Athletech News, 20 October 2026. Instructor-led group training, with accountability and people in the room, is climbing the list that professionals use to plan 2027. That is our format. The apps are at the top of the list and the live class is the thing gaining.
What I’d do about it this week
- Pull a 90-day attendance trend on every student, tonight. Not this month’s attendance — the trend. Sort descending by decline. The Mariana Tek data says the people at the top of that list told you eight months ago.
- Call the five longest-tenured students whose attendance is down. Not a text, not an email blast. A call, from you, about their next goal and their next belt. The loyal member is the one the data says you are about to lose.
- Calculate your own median tenure and write it on the wall. Take everyone who left in the last twelve months, find the middle length of membership, and compare it to 13 months. If you cannot produce the number by Friday, that is this week’s real finding.
- Put one paid hour a week on the calendar for staff development. Scheduled, recurring, with a curriculum. Fifty-nine percent of employees in this industry say they get nothing; your instructors are in that number until you change it.
- Read your own home page out loud as if you were a mother of a seven-year-old. Count the words before anything speaks to her child. Then cut everything before it.
Martial Arts Professional Magazine covers the business of running martial arts schools, BJJ academies and MMA gyms worldwide. Every item above links to a dated, published source.
