LV acquired HYROX for 4.8 billion yuan, and Wang Jianlin made a huge fortune from the deal.

On a weekend in May 2026, around 10,000 people crowded into the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center. Music, lights and cheers rose one after another, sleds were pushed across the adhesive track on the ground, and the chains on rowing machines made clattering noises.

This is a sports competition organized by HYROX, where participants need to pay a registration fee of 600 yuan in advance. Even so, all competition slots have already been sold out.

Eight years ago, the first competition held in Germany only had 650 participants. The growth of HYROX is obvious to all. UK-based industry media HCM previously estimated that HYROX's revenue in 2025 was around 135 million euros, and it is expected to approach 300 million euros in 2026.

It is undeniable that HYROX, which gets people to spend money to sweat it out, has developed into a fairly large-scale business.

But just yesterday, this booming business was sold.

Infront Sports & Media, the controlling shareholder of HYROX, announced that it has completed the sale of most of its equity stake in HYROX, and the buyer is a consortium led by L Catterton, a global consumer investment institution. No financial terms have been disclosed, but Bloomberg previously reported that this transaction values HYROX at approximately 600 million euros, equivalent to around 4.8 billion yuan.

L Catterton was formed in 2016 through the merger of L Capital under the LVMH Group and US private equity firm Catterton, with the support of the family office of Bernard Arnault, the richest man in the world. Yuanqi Forest, Heytea, Marubi and other well-known brands are all included in its investment portfolio.

The controlling shareholder of the seller Infront is Wanda Group. On February 10, 2015, at a press conference held in Beijing, Wang Jianlin announced that he would cooperate with three institutions and the management of Infront Management to acquire 100% equity of the Swiss sports marketing company for 1.05 billion euros, with Wanda Group holding a 68.2% controlling stake.

There are no balls, no opponents, and participants need to pay 600 yuan to compete in a race that requires them to run 8 kilometers and complete 8 fitness stations. Why is this business worth 4.8 billion yuan?

Growing from 650 Participants to 1.4 Million Participants

The two founders of HYROX have respective expertise: one is experienced in event operation, and the other has a professional athlete background.

Christian Toetzke has been engaged in event operation for cycling and triathlon for many years, and is a thorough industry veteran. Moritz Fuerst is a two-time Olympic champion of the German men's hockey team, winning two gold medals at Beijing 2008 and London 2012. After retiring, he did not become a coach like most athletes, but started his own business. The two got together and came up with a creative idea: so many people in the gym work out every day, but there is no place for them to compete after training.

There are marathons, swimming races and other events, but they are limited to aerobic exercise. CrossFit also has competitions, but the movement threshold is too high for ordinary people to get started easily.

Under this concept, the HYROX competition system that has been replicated repeatedly came into being: run 1 kilometer, complete one functional station, and repeat this cycle 8 times. The 8 stations include ski erg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jump, rowing machine, farmer's carry, sandbag lunges and wall ball. Fuerst later recalled the original idea of founding the brand: to create a on-site effect worth 2 million euros with a budget of 200,000 euros.

The core factor that makes this business sustainable is standardization. At any station around the world, the equipment specifications, weights, track lengths and timing methods are all the same. This means that a runner who finishes the race in 1 hour and 25 minutes in Shenzhen can be directly ranked on the same leaderboard as the runner in Stockholm, and it also gives legitimacy to the World Championships at the end of the season. More importantly, it turns "holding a competition" into an activity that can be copied and launched in any city around the world without modification.

In 2023, 65 competitions were held around the world with 175,000 participants; by 2025, more than 80 competitions had been held, with a total revenue of around 130 million US dollars; by the 2025/26 season, the official announcement showed that there were more than 100 competitions, over 1.4 million participants and more than 1.5 million on-site spectators.

In terms of revenue structure, registration fees account for the largest proportion and are collected in cash in advance; sponsors include brands such as Puma, Red Bull, Amazfit and Centr, and Amazon also reached a cooperation with HYROX in 2026; media copyrights and derivative sales each account for half of the remaining revenue.

In addition, there are three levels of gym authorization. Gyms pay fees every year to obtain authorization, standardized training resources and promotion support. By the end of 2024, 5,000 gyms around the world had obtained the authorization.

This business basically generates pure gross profit. The event side sells tickets for each session, while the authorization side sells the brand license.

What is more impressive is that HYROX's growth hardly relies on paid advertising, but on the photos, videos and other content posted by participants themselves. Its global Chief Growth Officer once publicly said that user-generated content and word-of-mouth are the core engine, and the power is incredibly strong. The total view count of related posts about this topic on Xiaohongshu is counted in billions.

Netizens have mixed opinions on it. Some people call it "paid brick-moving", while others describe it as "paid adult fitness test". The most direct comment is: you pay to suffer, and you have to post the experience on your social circle after you finish.

Some people also summed up the three standard configurations of the new middle class: marathon, skiing and HYROX. After finishing the race, posting a nine-grid photo on social media immediately earns you social capital. A gym owner also commented that in the past, members would leave immediately after working out, but now they will ask "When is the registration time for the next event?" after finishing their training.

Self-mockery aside, people really do pay for it.

The growth slope of HYROX's China business is extremely steep. In November 2024, the first stop in Chinese mainland was held in Beijing, with less than 1700 actual participants. The first stop in Shanghai in April 2025 had more than 3000 participants, and by November, the additional event held in Shanghai had nearly 70000 participants, while the event held in Shenzhen in December also had 6700 participants. By May 2026, the number of participants at the Shanghai station exceeded 10000, three times more than last year. In the same season, new stations were added in cities including Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan and Hangzhou. The Chengdu station had more than 8000 participants, with Zhang Jike on the participant list, and 75-year-old Wang Shi also took part in the event. The number of cooperating gyms has grown from more than a dozen at the beginning to more than 500 now.

It is worth mentioning that Wang Shi, the founder of Vanke, has been very fascinated by HYROX in recent years. He not only personally participated in multiple events and won the championship in his age group, but also set up related training venues to actively promote this sport.

Wang Jianlin Made a Huge Profit

HYROX is often joked about as a "capital-driven game", but many people may not know that in the past few years, its controlling shareholder was Infront Sports & Media, which is backed by the well-known Wanda Group.

Infront invested in HYROX in December 2019, and was only a minority shareholder at that time. By October 2022, it increased its stake to become the controlling shareholder, holding "slightly more than half" of the shares, and HYROX was merged into Infront's individual and corporate fitness division.

At that time, HYROX was still very small, with only 65 competitions held around the world in the whole year of 2023.

Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, Infront has more than 1,000 employees and over 40 offices. It represents the media and marketing rights of a large number of top events such as FIFA, UEFA, the Premier League and Serie A, with revenue exceeding 1.2 billion euros in 2025. Its head Philippe Blatter is the nephew of Sepp Blatter, former President of FIFA.

For HYROX, the resources Infront brought are very practical: the expertise of event operation, the sponsorship sales network, and the synergy of the entire mass-participation event division. B2Run, XLETIX, Muddy Angel Run, Megamarsch are all in this division, and there is also a long-term relationship with the Marathon Majors series, including the Shanghai Marathon, a candidate event for the Marathon Majors.

2015 was Wang Jianlin's sports year, and Wanda Sports was announced to be established. In January, Wanda invested 45 million euros to acquire 20% equity of Atletico Madrid; in February, it acquired Infront from private equity firm Bridgepoint for 1.05 billion euros; in August, it purchased World Triathlon Corporation for 650 million US dollars. The logic at that time was: the operation right and agency right of large-scale events are the most upstream and most profitable part of the sports industry, which have been divided up by European and American companies. Chinese companies have no chance to grow up on their own, so they can only make acquisitions.

In July 2019, Wanda Sports rang the bell on NASDAQ with an issue price of 8 US dollars, lower than the previous range of 9 to 11 US dollars. After listing, its stock price kept falling. Eight months later in March 2020, Wanda Sports announced that it would sell World Triathlon Corporation to the American company Advance for 730 million US dollars, and the proceeds would be used to repay Credit Suisse loans and related payables. The acquisition cost was 650 million US dollars, plus subsequent investment, this business barely made any profit.

After selling the triathlon business, Infront became the last decent asset in Wanda's overseas portfolio.

In August 2023, Reuters reported that Wanda had commissioned Deutsche Bank to find a buyer for Infront, and the process was in the early stage. In October 2025, Bloomberg reported that Boyu Capital was teaming up with NJF Capital to explore the acquisition of Infront. The two sides negotiated for several months but failed to reach an agreement on the terms, and Wanda responded that the news was untrue. In February 2026, this nearly three-year strategic assessment officially ended, with the conclusion that Infront would continue to operate as an independent company, and Wanda would remain as the long-term controlling shareholder.

Seven months later, Infront sold HYROX first.

Since the whole asset cannot be sold, they took down the most expensive single product on the shelf to sell. Infront is a large but heavy business, with copyright guarantee pressure weighing on cash flow year by year, which requires buyers to have extremely strong financial strength; HYROX is different. It has the fastest growth, the lightest model, the most attractive story, and is the easiest to be priced by a consumer fund.

Blatter said in the announcement that in the past seven years, HYROX has grown into a fast-growing global business, bringing considerable returns to Infront; the sale decision is based on a comprehensive strategic assessment, and the offer reflects the strength and prospects of this platform.

At the end of 2019, HYROX had just finished its second season, with a global participant size of tens of thousands; when Infront took the controlling stake in October 2022, HYROX was still recovering from the pandemic. The comparable asset in the same period was CrossFit, which was acquired by Berkshire Partners in 2020 at an undisclosed price, with industry estimates ranging from 200 million to 250 million US dollars, corresponding to an annual revenue of about 100 million US dollars at that time.

The 600 million euro valuation corresponds to the revenue of about 130 million US dollars in 2025, which is about 4 times the price-to-sales ratio; if calculated based on the 30 million euro EBITDA circulated in the industry, it is about 20 times; if calculated based on the expected 220 million US dollar revenue in 2026, the forward price-to-sales ratio is less than 3 times. Infront holds "slightly more than half" of the equity, and is expected to obtain dozens of times of return on investment.

Why Did LV Acquire a Fitness Running Event

The consortium of the acquirer is led by L Catterton, with members including the two founders Toetzke and Fuerst, as well as WndrCo, an investment institution founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks, and partner Sujay Jaswa. After the transaction is completed, the two founders will regain the majority control, and L Catterton and WndrCo will be minority shareholders. When Fuerst announced the news on social platforms, he said very frankly that no one could get rid of the two of them in a short period of time.

So a more accurate statement is: the LV-backed capital led the investment, and the founders returned to take the helm.

What is the background of L Catterton? It manages about 40 billion US dollars of equity capital, covering private equity, credit and real estate. More than 200 investment and operation personnel are distributed in 18 offices. Since its establishment in 1989, it has completed more than 300 investments, with a single investment ranging from 5 million US dollars to 5 billion US dollars. Its China team has filed a RMB fund manager record since 2021, and at the end of 2024, it landed a consumer equity fund with a scale of about 940 million yuan in Huangpu, Guangzhou.

Its investment portfolio in the fitness track can almost be regarded as the chronicle of the European and American fitness industry in the past ten years. It invested in Peloton in 2015, and has made multiple investments in and exits from a large number of fitness brands including Equinox, SoulCycle, Flywheel, Pure Barre, CorePower Yoga, Xponential Fitness, Tonal, Hydrow, iFIT/NordicTrack and ClassPass. The week in September 2024 was even more intensive: it first invested 200 million US dollars in German fitness technology company EGYM, and then acquired the majority stake of pilates chain Solidcore at a valuation of 600 to 700 million US dollars.

The valuation range of Solidcore is almost exactly the same as that of HYROX in this transaction. But one is an asset-heavy chain model, while the other is an event IP that copies its operation manual to the whole world.

This is the first reason why consumer PE is willing to pay this price for HYROX. Miray Topay, partner of L Catterton, said that what the two founders did is not just a competition, but created a whole new category. This sentence sounds like a polite remark, but it actually sets a valuation anchor: in the context of consumer investment, brands that can define a category never enjoy the average multiple of the whole industry.

The second reason is hidden in the cost structure. The revenue of the event is paid in advance, and the registration fee is collected before the event starts; to launch a new event in a new city, there is no need to buy land, decorate buildings or hire a resident team. It only needs to rent an exhibition center, and transport the standardized equipment and process to the site. The gym authorization part is even more extreme. It sells a license and a set of course systems, with marginal cost close to zero. 5000 cooperating venues are equivalent to 5000 free recruitment entrances.

The lightweight and replicable model is a strong support that can survive economic cycles.

The third advantage is what LVMH-backed capital is good at, that is, the radius of brand extension. A brand that gathers millions of people to participate in the same activity every year, and makes people voluntarily upload their results on social platforms, can naturally expand to footwear and apparel, equipment, nutrition supplements, training products and other fields. Toetzke mentioned three key future priorities in the announcement: the goal of entering the Olympic Games, bringing more people to the starting line, and investing in R&D of new products that can improve the HYROX experience. The third point in plain language is to develop, promote and sell related products.

There are risks that are very easy to identify.

The hybrid competitive track has become very crowded, with new events such as ATHX and Alpha Games emerging constantly, and boutique fitness brands have also launched similar products. A reference example is CrossFit: it was put up for sale in March 2025, commissioned Moelis to find a buyer, but no transaction was completed after nearly a year. In 2026, the new CEO announced that the sale was cancelled. The company's management said that the decline in participation in recent years was due