Fitness sharing service Gogym has agreed to merge with Gymmy

Consolidation is beginning in the market for services to sign up for fitness clubs and studios without purchasing a subscription. The MTS-controlled Gogym project is absorbing competitor Gymmy, expecting to increase the number of users by 40%. Participants in the fitness market predict the development of a segment that currently involves 200–250 thousand users, but warn that this business is characterized by low profitability.

The fitness sharing service Gogym has agreed to merge with a similar project Gymmy, Gogym told Kommersant. The terms of the deal were not disclosed there. The head of Gogym, Alexey Yur, clarified that after the completion of the process, the Gymmy brand will leave the market. Thus, he adds, Gogym’s user base will grow by more than 40%, which will allow the service to capture more than half of the market. Gymmy “Kommersant” did not answer.

Telecom Daily CEO Denis Kuskov says that the value of Gymmy’s business “theoretically could be several tens of millions of rubles.” President of the National Fitness Community Elena Silina notes that some sharing services charge 30% of the cost of the lesson for services. She explains that the services make it possible to visit clubs for 1.5–2 thousand rubles. per month or use per-minute tariffs – from 2 rubles. in a minute. A Kommersant source in the market says that the services have low margins: “Business survives mainly by expanding the client base.” Therefore, according to him, there are still few players in the market, “not everyone manages to gain a foothold.”

The economics of such projects are not simple; the model can work if the service cooperates with several hundred gyms and is used by tens of thousands of clients per month, agrees FitnessData managing partner Maxim Borovikov. So far, only Fitmost has such indicators – the only player operating without losses, the expert notes. The Kommersant company did not respond. According to Ms. Silina, fitness clubs, under an agreement with the service, can determine the time of access for clients, so popular sites offer the least convenient time for visiting. The President of the Association of Fitness Industry Operators, Olga Kiseleva, claims that mainly small market players work with sharing applications.

Elena Silina notes that such services are now popular in large cities, but in the next three to five years they may appear in cities with a population of 500 thousand people or more. So far, according to Mr. Borovikov, 200–250 thousand people use fitness sharing services, while the overall audience of clubs is 6.5 million people.

Olga Kiseleva calls the development of fitness sharing a consumer trend, but the future of market players depends on the development of their financial model and increasing business sustainability. General Director of TMT Consulting Konstantin Ankilov considers the market potential to be limited. He points out that not all major ecosystems are still represented on it – for them it is not yet such an obvious niche as music or video content. Although Gogym itself explained to Kommersant that they do not exclude the emergence of new players and consider consolidation as one of the growth points of the segment.

Alexandra Mertsalova, Anatoly Kostyrev, Nikita Korolev