Fitness thermometer: the sector increases its income, although it postpones the recovery to 2024
Fitness postpones your recovery. Around 70% of the operators believe that the sector will recover the business volume lost due to the pandemic during the first half of 2024 or later, according to the Fitness Thermometer, prepared based on the opinion of a panel of companies in the sector in Spain. On the other hand, the remaining 30% consider that they will match the pre-pandemic levels before the end of this year.
Despite the fact that the sector is pessimistic about reaching pre-Covid-19 levels in the coming months, all operators have increased their billing during the first half of 2023. 50% have experienced a “substantial” year-on-year increase, as industry sources point out to Palco23. No operator has acknowledged that their business volume has decreased in the last six months.
Compared to the first half of 2022, 50% of the operators consider that their billing has increased substantially, while the other half say that it did so moderately
One of the determining factors for the increase in income has been the recovery of subscribers. While 90% consider that the level of members in their centers increased moderately or substantially During the first half of the year, only 10% point out that it remained the same or less than the same period in 2022.
In any case, the level of users has not reached the number of subscribers in the years prior to 2020. 70% of the operators point out that subscribers have decreased compared to 2019, while the rest conclude that they are close. “The challenge is to recover the partners of 2019”, points out a manager of the sector.
Rising energy costs have also not helped the fitness industry to return to a pre-pandemic financial situation. 90% of the operators consider that the cost of supplies has increased during the first half of 2023 compared to the cost that they charged to their income statement in the same period of the previous year. Only 10% have seen their spending on energy decrease during the period.
70% of the operators in the sector have frozen their expansion plans for the next few months
The current situation has made 70% of the operators in the sector have frozen their expansion plans. While 20% consider that it will do so during the second half of 2023, the rest postpone it to 2024 or later. “The main challenge for the second part of the year is to expand the presence in Spain”, pointed out one of the operators. Only 30% have opted during the first six months of the year to open new centers in the Spanish territory.
Although various operators agree that The main challenge for the remainder of the course is to consolidate the registered numbers in the first part of the year. “We must focus on consolidating and completing the recovery that has been taking place since September 2022, with increasing competition,” said a panelist.
fitness thermometer
The Fitness Thermometer is a Palco23 project launched in 2018 with the aim of becoming a useful decision-making tool for executives in the sector. The objective of the project is to offer journalistic content of high interest to professionals in the fitness business in Spain and, at the same time, value the generation of economic activity in the industry as a whole.
In this sense, the Fitness Thermometer measures the pulse of a sample of operators distributed throughout the Spanish geography and representative of different market segments on a quarterly basis.
