L Catterton places its bet, HYROX is now truly "gearing up for the Olympics".
No matter how this business is run, what is sold is never just tickets.
HYROX has only risen to fame this year, but for some time, people on social platforms have been asking if it is already going out of style?
Of course not. The reason why you can't see videos of Wang Shi and Zhang Jike these days is that the last round of competitions in several cities all finished in mid-August, and the next round will not start until mid-September.
Xiao Luo, a fitness enthusiast, said that the gym she often goes to now is almost occupied by people preparing for the competition, and she just found that there are so many hidden masters in the gym.
There are also industry giants stepping in. For example, Adidas signed a four-year exclusive global strategic cooperation with ATHX, a British hybrid fitness event, completely following the path of Puma's bet on HYROX. Les Mills, the veteran leader in the fitness industry, has cooperated with HYROX to launch a new fitness event IP.
However, HYROX's soaring popularity on social platforms in the past two years and the participation of more and more celebrities have indeed given people the illusion that it is just a flash-in-the-pan internet-famous sport. It is hard to say whether those who are working hard to prepare for the competition this year will "repurchase" next year, no matter for self-improvement or checking in for photos, after all, this sport consumes a lot of physical strength and time.
Whether a sport or event can survive cycles after becoming a hit is an eternal topic. But HYROX has indeed reached a turning point now.
In the early morning of September 9, Infront Sports & Media, under Wanda Group, announced that it would sell its shares in HYROX to a consortium led by L Catterton, the world's largest consumer private equity firm.
According to Bloomberg, the transaction gives HYROX a final valuation of about 600 million euros.
HYROX's two founders, Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste, are also part of this consortium. After the transaction is completed, they will hold a total of 51% of the shares. Toetzke even mentioned the goal of making HYROX an Olympic sport in the official statement.
What is bought for 600 million euros? Is the so-called Olympic dream really achievable?
01
New Imagination
Infront started betting on HYROX in 2019 when it was still in its infancy, and gradually took a 60% majority stake, while the founding team retained 40% of the shares.
In the end, Infront pocketed 360 million euros, which undoubtedly reaped huge investment returns. According to the general estimation of the industry, the return is "dozens of times".
It is worth noting that, different from previous foreign media reports that L Catterton would acquire the controlling stake of HYROX, Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste not only chose not to exit at the high point of valuation, but instead increased their holdings by leveraging loans to take back the controlling stake.
L Catterton, the LVMH-backed fund that has always aimed to take controlling stakes and holds abundant restructuring ammunition, chose to step back and let the founders take the helm. This is presumably based on the judgment that the core value of this sport in the future lies in the professionalism of the founding team.
Toetzke has operated the IRONMAN Germany series and is a founding participant of the World Triathlon Series; Fürste is a two-time Olympic field hockey gold medalist.
According to media reports, during the period when Infront held the controlling stake, the Infront team contributed a lot to the explosive growth of the events (especially in China), and many of the local event organizers are local institutions, but the HYROX team retained most of the dominance in commercial decision-making.
The founding team's "ability to define" blank events is also a very scarce capability. Toetzke's inspiration for creating HYROX came from the discovery that many Germans work out as their way of doing sports, but unlike runners who can participate in marathons, the fitness crowd had no standardized events to join.
Another participant in the consortium is WndrCo, founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks. The institution just led a $15 million seed round for XENOM, an emerging HYROX-like event, in February this year. It can be seen that WndrCo is optimistic about the entire "fitness endurance race" track. Katzenberg is also a director of the LA 28 Organizing Committee, with inherent Olympic resources, which may provide an extra boost.
L Catterton's past investment experience brings more imagination to HYROX. Its investment philosophy is to focus on secular trends, that is, long-term trends that can go through cyclical fluctuations.
L Catterton has a complete layout in the global fitness sector, including Equinox, a high-end gym brand in the US, Wellness in China, Peloton, a home fitness brand (which successfully avoided the market downturn), solidcore, a Pilates studio brand in the US, Pure Barre, a ballet shaping fitness brand, high-tech golf equipment, and ClassPass, a fitness platform, etc.
However, L Catterton has long lacked a head event content IP in the fitness track. Investing in HYROX fills the last gap. Sports can be regarded as a lifestyle and a traffic entry.
L Catterton's investment case of Birkenstock can be regarded as the best possible development path for HYROX: further breaking out of the niche circle, commercialization, and IPO. In 2021, L Catterton and the Arnault family jointly acquired more than 70% of Birkenstock's shares at a valuation of about 4.8-4.9 billion US dollars; after its listing in 2023, Birkenstock's valuation once reached 10 billion US dollars, and L Catterton later reduced its holdings in batches.
"What Christian and Moritz have created is not just an event, but a whole new sports category." Miray Topay, partner of L Catterton, commented on HYROX.
This also sets two upper limits for HYROX's imagination: if it is just a competition, its future benchmark will be IRONMAN, and its valuation will follow the multiple of event companies; if it is a category, it can challenge lululemon, and enjoy the premium of a category definer and lifestyle brand.
02
Why It Is Worth 600 Million Euros
If you want to find a reference frame for this transaction, you have to trace back 6 years.
In July 2020, American entrepreneur Eric Roza acquired 100% of CrossFit's equity with the support of Berkshire Partners, an investment firm. The official did not disclose the financial terms of the transaction. But at that time, CrossFit was in a public opinion crisis caused by inappropriate remarks from its founder. The outside world estimated based on its annual revenue that the transaction was between 200 million and 250 million US dollars.
CrossFit ignited the fire of comprehensive endurance training in the mass market. However, this system is highly intense and has a limited audience. Although it has its own event IP, it has not formed a complete profit model.
CrossFit features high training intensity and more complex movements
Especially in the past two or three years, the fitness market has almost been in a stage of restructuring, while CrossFit has continued to face high-level turmoil after the change of corporate control, leaving room for growth for new players.
HYROX took the opposite path: first complete mass popularization through events, then push training into daily life, with the core logic of "making training results visible".
The 600 million euros is paid for a globally replicable and sustainably monetizable fitness IP ecosystem, superimposed with the expectation of explosive growth in emerging markets with China as the core. Hybrid endurance events are indeed profitable now.
HYROX has a precise product design, for example, the technical requirements and finishing thresholds are lower than CrossFit, which breaks the ceiling of the mass market; the competition system is absolutely standardized, the "question bank" is fixed, and the results are included in the same global ranking system, so users can practice repeatedly and are motivated to do so; the specially designed lighting, music and photography services for the event are very suitable for social media communication.
Many people have not noticed that the gym authorization system is actually its important moat.
The last standard configuration for gyms was Les Mills, which is already over 50 years old. However, the price threshold of group classes continues to decrease, while fitness scenarios are more fragmented, making it increasingly difficult for consumers to pay a premium for daily fitness.
HYROX has developed more than 15,000 partner gyms around the world, which not only generates stable B-side revenue, but also continuously delivers high-precision participants to the events. Asset-light, high repurchase rate, and strong stickiness — this is the model that capital likes most.
At the commercial level, this model is finally transformed into a diverse revenue structure that surpasses traditional events. In addition to the basic revenue such as registration fees, commercial sponsorships, and venue licensing fees, there are also audience tickets that are now hotly sought after, as well as peripheral product and content licensing.
From the day you sign up for training in the gym to the moment you finish the race and post on social platforms, every step contributes value to this IP.
If the mature European and American markets have verified the feasibility of this model, the Asian market represented by China is the core growth increment that supports the 600 million euro valuation.
The growth rate of the Chinese market can no longer be described as fast. HYROX officially entered the Chinese mainland at the end of 2024, and the number of participants in the first stop in Beijing was less than 1,700; only 18 months later, the number of participants in the 2026 Shanghai stop directly exceeded 10,000. As of July, there were more than 600 official partner gyms in China. This is just the beginning.
At present, this transaction has no impact on the Chinese market. It is reported that HYROX's business in the Chinese mainland will continue to be controlled by the current operator, HiFit Sports. The 2026 event plan for the China region has not been adjusted for the time being. Hong Kong has been scheduled to host the HYROX World Championship in 2027, which will be the first time the event is held outside Europe and the United States.
Capital's sense of smell is always the most sensitive. According to Bloomberg's earlier exclusive report, L Catterton's initial acquisition plan intended to introduce Asian co-investors to participate. This is because HYROX's growth in Asian markets such as China, Singapore, and Japan is too rapid, and it must bind local resources to catch up with this explosive growth.
In other words, a considerable part of the 600 million euro valuation is a call option for the "explosive growth of the Chinese market".
The European and American markets provide a stable basic market, and the emerging Asian market provides long-term imagination. This is the core pricing logic of this valuation.
03
The Unabandonable Olympic Dream
In the official announcement video, the two founders made it very clear: 1. HYROX is not focused on the next few years, but on the next few decades; 2. In the next few years, the focus will be on achieving the Olympic goal.
Although HYROX's growth curve is still steep, it has begun to face negative feedback on public praise on social media.
Take the Chinese market as an example. After the incident where the commentator dissed Zhang Jike at the Chengdu stop, the public began to resent HYROX's exclusive small-circle culture, and even labeled it as "blind following the trend of the middle class". Such labels will greatly damage the positive image of the brand and its process of breaking out of the niche circle.
Being included in the Olympic Games may be the optimal solution for HYROX to continue accumulating public praise at present. "Striving for Olympic entry" means enhancing professional and institutional endorsement. Even this action itself has a strong mass market brand effect, which can hedge the negative feedback brought by the "internet-famous" label.
In May this year, Toetzke, who participated in an event in Hong Kong as a HYROX executive, revealed the progress of this Olympic bid plan to the public: the company is reaching a final agreement with World Triathlon, and plans to add a hybrid event category based on HYROX.
Bloomberg's report at that time poured cold water on this plan, arguing that the wiser approach for HYROX was to abandon such lofty ambitions and focus on commercial efforts.
Because this plan is very difficult.
As a commercial event whose brand, rules and event rights are owned by a single company, HYROX has two paths to enter the Olympics: First, it can choose to establish an international non-profit governing body to supervise the sport, formulate standardized rules, anti-doping compliance and other regulations, and then the International Olympic Committee will consider its application; Second, there is a relatively rare path, which is what HYROX is doing now: joining an existing federation (such as World Triathlon).
In the future, World Triathlon will lead the negotiations with the International Olympic Committee to promote HYROX's entry into the Olympic process under the name of "Hyathlon" (Hybrid Endurance Race).
In recent Olympic Games, new trendy events have been continuously tested, and the selection criteria include accessibility, global coverage, gender balance and attractiveness to young people. In this regard, HYROX does meet the preferences of the Olympic Committee.
However, after several consecutive expansions, the Olympic Games have become "larger and larger". The 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, to be held the year after next, will be the largest in history. Therefore, the era of large expansion is over, and it has become a consensus that it will be more difficult for new sports to enter the Olympic Games.
Apart from the Olympic dream, HYROX's two founders also face many problems. The most important one is to maintain the original community activity of the event while accelerating commercialization.
The endorsement of L Catterton and WndrCo means that HYROX will further expand the boundaries of commercialization and entertainment in the future, which is also the general trend of sports event IPs now.
Both triathlon and HYROX events require complex and rigorous pre-competition training
Back to HYROX itself, there is still much room for commercial expansion. A comparable event is IRONMAN, the triathlon brand.
IRONMAN was acquired by Wanda 11 years ago and resold 6 years ago. After the transformation by capital, its commercial expansion includes significantly increasing registration fees, a complete brand authorization system, and collecting city hosting fees, etc.
Neither HYROX nor IRONMAN has announced their revenue figures.
Bloomberg's report expects HYROX