HYROX Completes Sale, Founding Team Regains Control, LV-Backed Fund Makes Investment
HYROX, the globally popular fitness running event, has just completed its sale: the German founding team has taken back control, L Catterton, a fund under LVMH, participated in the investment, and Infront Sports under Wanda Group, the original controlling shareholder, has fully exited.
At the wee hours of September 9, Beijing time, Infront Sports officially announced on its official website that it has sold all its shares held in HYROX to a consortium led by L Catterton, which includes HYROX's two founders Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste, as well as Silicon Valley-based investment fund WndrCo, whose general partner is the former chairman of The Walt Disney Studios.
The two HYROX founders announced the news on their official Instagram account, and revealed that they have repurchased and reinvested in HYROX, and currently hold the majority equity of the HYROX company.
The former owner of HYROX, Infront Sports, is headquartered in Switzerland and was acquired by Wanda Group in 2015. This sale means that HYROX has officially returned to the hands of its German founding team and is no longer a Chinese company.
The two HYROX founders announced the repurchase of majority equity in HYROX on Instagram
L Catterton, the lead institution of the transaction, is no stranger to the global fitness sector. In 2018, L Catterton Asia Fund acquired Wellness, the leading gym chain in China. It is also the investor or acquirer of almost all major gym brands in the international market, including high-end US gym Equinox (SoulCycle), South American gym BodyTech, leading US home fitness companies Peloton and Tonal, as well as ClassPass. As the world's leading consumer investment fund under LVMH, it has invested in numerous top global consumer goods brands across beauty, food and other sectors.
The specific transaction amount has not been disclosed, but according to recent reports from Bloomberg, the transaction is valued at an estimated 600 million euros (nearly 700 million US dollars). Different from earlier rumors, L Catterton did not acquire HYROX, and the two founders currently hold the majority equity of the company.
L Catterton
Infront Sports, the biggest beneficiary of this transaction, is expected to get a return of dozens of times on its investment. In 2019, Infront made its first investment in HYROX, and continued to increase its stake in 2022 during the pandemic to take control of HYROX. Over 7 years, the number of HYROX events in its latest season has exceeded 100, with 1.4 million participants, making it a global phenomenal sports event.
HYROX's two founders Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste stated in the official announcement video on social media that the development of HYROX should focus on the long term, not just the next few years, but the coming decades. They also noted: In the next few years, we will focus on achieving the Olympic goal, continue to welcome millions of people to join HYROX, and seize opportunities to develop and invest in new products to upgrade HYROX's products and services.
Of course, for HYROX's China market, the operating entity seems to be facing upcoming changes. Whether Infront Sports China under Wanda Group will continue to cooperate with the German headquarters to operate the events, or a new operator will take over, as well as the changes that new investors L Catterton and WndrCo will bring to HYROX, will all affect the future direction of this hit event in the Chinese market.
01
HYROX Completes Sale
Founding Team Returns
After acquisition rumors spread across multiple media outlets, HYROX's parent company Infront Sports finally confirmed the sale news.
According to official documents, Infront Sports & Media AG announced that it has completed the sale of its majority stake in HYROX to a consortium led by L Catterton, with HYROX founders Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste participating in the deal, and investment institution WndrCo also taking part in the transaction.
Co-founder Moritz Fürste stated: This acquisition marks a key step in HYROX's rapid development history. As co-founders, we will always prioritize shaping the development direction and process of HYROX, and taking the best interests of the global community as our starting point.
HYROX
Less than 4 years after the previous sale in 2022, the founding team has repurchased the majority equity of the company, which is not a common case in reverse acquisition sports scenarios. From the statements of the founding team, they have shown patience for HYROX's development, and even intend to control overheating growth.
The statement from Infront Sports under Wanda Group shows its satisfaction with this transaction. Infront Sports noted: The offer for this transaction is very attractive, which fully reflects the advantages and prospects of the HYROX platform. "Over the past seven years, HYROX has developed into a highly successful and fast-growing global enterprise, bringing generous returns to Infront. After a comprehensive strategic assessment, we decided to sell our shares."
This sale transaction is not unexpected. On the one hand, the Swiss sports marketing company announced as early as the beginning of 2026 that it was considering the feasibility of a sale, and L Catterton was one of the widely discussed potential buyers. Under the downward pressure on China's commercial real estate sector, Dalian Wanda Group, Infront's parent company, has continuously sold its high-quality assets, which is no longer news.
Infront Sports, which has reaped dozens of times of returns from HYROX, is expected to be one of the few high-return investments Wanda Group has made in recent years.
HYROX
With the return of the founding team, according to the information they released to the public, HYROX is expected to see many changes including the pursuit of Olympic recognition, diversified event products and derivative consumer goods.
For example, for WndrCo, the investment institution in this consortium, earlier this year, the two co-founders Toetzke and Fürste joined the WndrCo fund and invested in XENOM, another US physical fitness race, which shows the founding team's multiple plans for the future development direction of physical fitness races.
The pursuit of Olympic recognition means that the founding team plans to define this fitness running category or set industry rules through HYROX, and lay out more physical fitness race categories. As for the consumer goods sector, the investment from L Catterton will probably improve the derivatives layout of this world-leading physical fitness race IP.
XENOM Physical Fitness Race
What remains unchanged in the short term after the sale is that under the momentum of rising millions of participants every year, HYROX's scale will continue to hit new highs, with more event stations and longer duration of each single event.
For example, the New York event this year had 50,000 participants over 8 days, which should set a participation record for indoor fitness races. The upcoming Beijing event in China this week has added a 4-day schedule, which is also expected to set a new record for HYROX participation in China.
Founded in 2017, from the first HYROX event in Hamburg, Germany to today, this fitness event company founded by founders with triathlon and field hockey athlete backgrounds most likely did not expect to create today's global scale.
Regaining control also allows the two athlete-background founders to take this event further as they planned.
02
HYROX Breaks Away from the Wanda System
But Capitalization Is an Inevitable Direction
It is undeniable that Infront Sports, with a professional sports marketing background, brought HYROX to today's height after the acquisition by operating events in a professional sports event manner. However, HYROX, which has returned control to the founding team, also needs to be elevated to a more professionally operated sports event dimension.
Although no official arrangement has been made yet, after Infront Sports fully exits the operation in the future, the founding team needs to find a more professional sports event company to support this mass-participation event with over 100 sessions and millions of participants around the world every year, including the guarantee of event rules and the guarantee of participant safety, etc.
In addition, as the world's top consumer investment fund, the primary goal of L Catterton investing in HYROX is to exit through mergers and acquisitions or IPO. This means that HYROX will definitely not take a conservative path, but expand to a larger participant scale and more diversified commercial realization paths, such as the consumer derivatives route that L Catterton is good at.
EQUINOX FITNESS
There is no doubt that while HYROX continues to rapidly scale up in the future, it also needs to face other increasingly competitive physical fitness race brands. ATHX, supported by Adidas, seems to be the most high-profile one, and local physical fitness races in various regions will also continue to divert HYROX's participant groups.
In the Chinese market, the expansion of competition formats of BetterWE Physical Fitness Race, Les Mills CEREMONY Physical Fitness Race, and Full Game will all be common players of local physical fitness race IPs in the future.
Currently valued at 700 million US dollars, HYROX is far from reaching the valuation and revenue scale required by capital for an IPO. To expand to a larger scale, in addition to resisting the risk of declining event participation popularity, HYROX also needs to develop more business models, such as IP products and athlete brokerage, etc.
Using event IP as a benchmark, HYROX is likely to become the F1 of fitness running events. HYROX, which has returned to the founding team, has far more work to do and more challenges to face than when it was first founded.
As for the Chinese market, even as the event breaks into the mainstream, controversies around HYROX are gradually increasing, but even so, HYROX's growth in China still shows no sign of slowing down. Judging from the registration situation of the Beijing and Shanghai stations, the current scale of 10 stations a year is expected to continue to double.
According to information obtained from GymSquare, multiple major HYROX events in 2027 are expected to expand to 3-4 days, and the total number of stations throughout the year will continue to rise.
From the sponsorship perspective, HYROX has expanded its sponsorship group from sports brands to mainstream sponsors including automotive, beauty, 3C and internet sectors, becoming a phenomenal sports sponsorship event. It is expected that with the 2027 HYROX World Championship landing in Hong Kong, China, the event enthusiasm in China and even the whole of Asia will reach a new height.
The upward trend of HYROX is far from showing a downward trend at present.
03
How Long Will HYROX Remain Popular?
How long will the HYROX event remain popular? According to observations from many fitness enthusiasts, the decline in event popularity is expected to mainly stem from the repetition of events and competition formats. If the same group of people challenge the same track and participate for non-commercial reasons, their enthusiasm for participation may decline.
Therefore, HYROX's penetration into lower-tier markets will become the main direction for the event to continuously expand its participant group in the future.
Benchmarked against earlier similar events such as CrossFit and Spartan Race, HYROX has achieved far greater scale and commercialization capabilities than the previous two. The reason lies in that HYROX has a sufficiently low entry threshold for the general public and a sufficiently large gym user base.
Up to now, HYROX has more than 700 authorized gyms in Chinese Mainland, which has laid a sufficiently solid foundation for HYROX's participant group and also built a moat for HYROX's subsequent competition.
From the sports brand