Exercise at home is reduced, but physical activity in centers is growing.
Not all the routines brought by the pandemic are here to stay. After the confinement, many feared that users, forced to internalize sports routines in improvised home gyms, would remain confined to the living room and not go out to the gym again, which would have a significant impact on the turnover of a buoyant sector by heat of health care trends. For a while, it seemed that this would happen, but the data reflects that it seems that the tables are beginning to turn.
Fitness is evolving the way in which sports are practiced towards an indoor-outdoor-centre combination: with respect to users who do sport frequently, the percentage of those who do it exclusively at home has dropped four points at a European level, to stand at 24%. Meanwhile, the number of people who exercise combining the outdoors and the gym rose one point (up to 7%) and those who do it at home and in the center (up to 7%).
This is stated in the European Health & Fitness Market Report 2023 study prepared by Deloitte and EuropeActive, which concludes that the fitness and health sector continues to grow. In Spain it is already at levels similar to those registered in 2019, that is, before the health crisis. Those who practice sports at home at the national level go from 62% in January 2022 to 50% in the same month this year, with which the trend is even more pronounced in Spain.
user pocket
Revenues increased by 33.6% compared to 2021, up to 2,115 million, while the number of subscribers increased by 11.1%, reaching close to 5.4 million in Spain. They pay an average monthly fee per member of almost 33 euros. The number of centers climbed 1.3% in Spain and reached 4,629, with an average of 1,163 members in each one, since the number of subscribers per center grew by 9.8%.
“The sector is registering very positive metrics and, in just two years, the pre-Covid figures have practically recovered,” says Alberto Puente, Deloitte’s Financial Advisory partner. Only in 2020, marked by the confinements, the income of the sector fell more than 43.1%.
The report, to which EXPANSIN has had access, combines this recovery with the description of other new habits in a framework in which the pandemic has qualified some of the behaviors of fitness users, although without yet entailing significant changes.
Thus, Spain is above the European average in terms of users with a regular fitness routine, outdoor users and club users, compared to a lower preference for exercising at home. The x-ray of fitness shows that 65% of Spanish users have a regular routine, compared to 60% of the European average. Similarly, the share of Spanish users habitual to outdoor fitness (54%), as well as those habitual to going to clubs (42%) is higher than the European average, of 52% and 40%, respectively.
Among other trends, club activities “are less impacted by budget cuts caused by inflation than other consumer categories.” In addition, the users of these centers use online planning tools to organize their face-to-face fitness sessions.
