The hottest sport among the middle class has been sold.
HYROX, which has just exploded in popularity across China, is about to change hands.
You must have come across plenty of such photos: in a huge indoor stadium, people with well-defined muscles are drenched in sweat in their bright-colored sportswear. Under the uniformly exquisite, trendy and vibrant atmosphere, every post is captioned "Unlocked another small goal".
Some people jokingly call it "paying to do farm work", but it has attracted a huge number of enthusiasts.
This week, L Catterton announced that a consortium led by it has acquired HYROX, the global fitness event brand. Infront, a subsidiary of the original controlling shareholder Wanda Group, has completed a full exit from its investment. According to Bloomberg, the overall valuation of the transaction is approximately 600 million euros (about 4.6 billion RMB).
This is arguably the most popular sports social activity among China's urban middle class at present. The competition rules are simple but attractive: run 1km, complete one functional training, and repeat the cycle 8 times. The low threshold makes people feel "I can do that too", while all participants post photos of their exhausted faces on social platforms after the race. It boasts high topic attention and strong sense of participation. Even though the registration fee is 799 yuan per person, tickets are always sold out immediately.
Now when you open social media, you can easily see 75-year-old Wang Shi sweating profusely while participating in HYROX without a shirt, with Tian Pujun cheering him on beside him — the pair are almost the best spokespersons for HYROX.
Bought by the LVMH-backed fund
Wanda exits the deal
More details of the transaction have come to light.
L Catterton, the lead investor of this deal, is a consumer fund under the LVMH Group, and also the world's largest consumer private equity fund with about 40 billion US dollars in assets under management, covering multiple sectors including consumer technology, health, beauty and more. It has previously invested in Chinese fitness brand Wellness, overseas fitness brands Equinox, Peloton and many other well-known projects, which is highly representative of industry trends.
In addition, the acquirer lineup also includes HYROX co-founders Christian Toetzke, Moritz Fürste, and WndrCo, a well-known Silicon Valley investment institution. After the transaction is completed, the two founders will regain the majority equity of HYROX.
Behind Infront Sports is Wanda Sports — in February 2015, Wanda Group led the acquisition of 100% equity of Switzerland-based Infront Sports Media, with Wanda holding 68.2% of the shares.
In the past few years, Wanda Sports has put many assets on the market, including the company that owns the Ironman brand, World Triathlon Corporation, and it has also exited its shares in the Atletico Madrid club. In January 2021, Wanda Sports delisted from NASDAQ and completed privatization.
Perhaps this sale of HYROX is meant to recover cash flow.
Back in December 2019, Infront Sports made its first strategic investment in HYROX, stepping into the mass fitness event track. At that time, HYROX was still a niche market player in Europe, a cold asset that no one was optimistic about.
In October 2022, Infront further increased its shareholding to take controlling stake. During this period, the founding team still led the daily operation of the company, and Infront mainly output global channels, sponsorship recruitment, and media marketing resources. In just a few years, they successfully turned HYROX from a niche European event into a top global sports IP.
Now with the continuous rise of the brand's market valuation, Infront has undoubtedly achieved a brilliant exit.
"Over the past seven years, HYROX has developed into a global enterprise with impressive performance and rapid growth, creating rich investment returns for Infront," said Philippe Blatter, President and CEO of Infront.
Why did a niche event suddenly become a hit
It is expected to generate 1.5 billion yuan in revenue this year
No one expected that HYROX would become popular all over the world so quickly.
The three founders behind it are all industry veterans: Christian Toetzke focuses on endurance events, and is a senior operator of triathlons and marathons; Moritz Fürste is a two-time Olympic hockey gold medalist and world champion; Michael Trautmann is an expert in the marketing field.
The team spotted a gap: more than half of Germans take regular gym workouts as their main exercise, but there is a lack of quantifiable competitions specially designed for fitness enthusiasts. So in 2017, HYROX came into being, and held its first event in Hamburg, Germany.
"We hope to create the gold standard for fitness competitions, just like what marathon means for running." The specific process is very simple: every 1km the runner completes, they will do one functional training (ski erg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, rowing, farmer's carry, walking lunges, wall ball throws), and the cycle repeats, finally finishing 8km of running and 8 fixed training sessions.
The whole competition is held indoors, only the total time is counted, and the results are included in a unified global ranking. To expand the coverage of participants, the event specially lowers the participation threshold, with no qualifying rounds and no time limit for finishing. Official data shows that about 98% of participants can complete the whole race.
After that, HYROX further expanded to European cities, and built a global championship system, extending the single-day event IP into a regular gym training standard, forming a dual profit model of "event ticket sales + offline fitness authorization".
Catering to the aesthetic preference of urban fitness groups, HYROX quickly broke through the circle — more than 1.3 million participants joined the 2025 to 2026 season alone, covering more than 30 countries and regions and over 100 cities, attracting sponsorship from industry partners including Puma, Red Bull, BYD, Biotherm, cosmetics giant Maybelline, and wearable device brand Amazfit.
According to the calculation of analysis agency Business Model Analyst, HYROX's revenue mainly comes from registration fees and ticket sales, licensed merchandise, sponsorships and gym authorization, of which registration fees and ticket sales account for about 60%, brand commercial sponsorships and licensed merchandise each account for about 15%, and gym authorization fees account for about 10%.
The rise of internet-famous sports is always unexpected. Tickets starting at hundreds of yuan are sold out for every event. HYROX's revenue was only about 40 million euros in 2024, and it is expected to exceed 200 million euros (about 1.5 billion yuan) this year. HYROX even has its sights set on the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games.
The most popular sport among the middle class
HYROX has swept across first-tier Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen almost overnight.
Back in November 2024, HYROX held its first event in Chinese mainland in Beijing, with less than 1700 participants. By the Shanghai station in May the following year, the number of participants of the two sessions exceeded 10,000, and it immediately became a traffic password on social platforms, with more than ten billion views on Douyin.
Every event is star-studded — since the beginning of this year, 75-year-old Wang Shi has frequently appeared at HYROX event venues, and successively won the age group championships at Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chengdu stations. Celebrities including Zhang Jike, Liu Genghong and Wang Qianyuan also participated in the events and shared their exhausted post-race photos.
As people describe it, HYROX is a huge "muscle purgatory". There is a hidden rule circulating on social media: the more exaggerated your expression is, the more likes you get. If there were no calm numbers jumping on the timer, people would think they had entered an urban collective stress-relief party.
But this "party" is by no means cheap. The registration fee for the individual group is 799 yuan, 1499 yuan for the double group, 1999 yuan for the four-person relay group, and even the spectator ticket costs 80 yuan per person. Netizens jokingly call it "paying to do farm work".
Coupled with the cost of co-branded running shoes required for participation, pre-race training camps, sports watches and other equipment, the total cost is quite high. As netizens summed up: if marathon is the proof of old money for the middle class, then HYROX is the new identity card of the middle class.
Even so, participants keep coming in an endless stream.
Facts prove that the "high price" is justified: the only feedback you get in the gym is a mirror, while running a marathon is too boring and lengthy. HYROX is different — you run 8km and complete 8 strength sessions. When the finish bell rings, your result will be included in the same global ranking system, which is clearly visible to all participants.
At this moment, just like the yoga mats, skis and camping sites that used to be engraved in the middle class's social media posts, clusters of seemingly vague challenges and achievements are all quantified into a trendy project with controllable and touchable checkpoints, and even the social experience in the community seems to be gilded.
"As long as you sign up for the race, you are an athlete, and no one will laugh at you," Zhang Jike once commented in a live stream. Actions including pushing sleds, pulling iron blocks and smashing wall balls are simple but a little rough, which can help the middle class get more release than yoga meditation.
From a deeper perspective, HYROX may represent a certain kind of scarcity.
Nowadays, the changes of the times are becoming more and more intense, and life often brings people a sense of vertigo inadvertently. HYROX appears at the right time — it is intense enough and positive enough. While bringing a limited degree of adventure and bounded challenges, it lets you realize that the control over your body can be so immersive.
In this way, the close-up photo of "painful but happy" after the race is the proof that you have truly lived in the moment.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "PE Daily" (ID: pedaily2012), written by Yu Mengying, published with authorization from 36Kr.