Running a small gym or studio right now sounds like it should be brutal — rising costs, bigger competitors, a crowded market for anyone’s attention and membership dollars. A new survey of the people actually doing it says something different: most of them are growing anyway, and they’re doing it while fully aware of how hard the ground has gotten underneath them.
What the survey actually found
Wellhub surveyed 662 gym and studio owners across 11 countries, and the results were published by the Health & Fitness Association on September 23. Eighty-six percent of owners said they grew their membership over the past year. Fifty-six percent said they improved their profit margin over the same period. And 95% said they’re dealing with intensified competition — meaning almost everyone in the survey is managing growth and rising pressure at the exact same time, not one instead of the other.
Forty percent of owners surveyed said they plan to open new locations within the next 12 months, according to the same report.
Why growth and rising competition aren’t actually a contradiction
A harder market doesn’t mean every operator loses. Rising competition usually squeezes the operators who were already running on thin margins or unclear positioning, while rewarding the ones who’ve built something specific enough that members don’t shop around. The 86% growth figure suggests most owners in this survey have found that specific footing, even in a crowded field.
Margin improvement alongside membership growth is the harder number to hit. It’s relatively easy to grow membership by cutting prices — it’s much harder to grow membership and improve profit margin at the same time. That 56% figure is the more telling number in the whole report, because it rules out “they just discounted their way to more members” as the explanation.
What HFA’s Anton Severin said about the findings
Health & Fitness Association VP of Research Anton Severin was quoted discussing what the numbers represent for the industry broadly — a sector that’s proven more resilient through rising costs than the conventional small-business narrative around gyms and studios would predict.
That resilience matters beyond this one survey. It’s a data point against the assumption that independent fitness businesses are inherently fragile compared to big-box competitors, when the actual numbers from owners themselves tell a more complicated story.
Why 95% report rising competition and still call it a growth year
Nearly every owner in this survey — 95% — said competition has intensified. That’s about as close to universal as a survey finding gets. What’s notable is that this same group of owners, overwhelmingly, is still reporting membership growth rather than decline.
The two numbers together suggest something worth sitting with if you run any kind of small, member-based business: competition intensifying doesn’t automatically mean your own numbers have to suffer. It might just mean you have to be clearer about who you serve and why they should stay.
What’s driving the 40% who plan to expand
Forty percent of surveyed owners planning new locations within 12 months is a meaningfully aggressive number for an industry that spent the earlier part of this decade dealing with pandemic-era closures and membership losses. It suggests confidence that’s been earned back gradually, built on actual performance rather than optimism alone.
If you’re a gym or studio owner yourself, that 40% figure is worth using as a real benchmark — not a pressure to expand on the same timeline, but a data point on how many of your peers across 11 countries are betting on growth right now, and presumably have the membership and margin numbers behind them to justify it.
What this means if you’re a member, not an owner
If you belong to a smaller gym or studio rather than a big national chain, this survey is a reasonable reassurance about its staying power. An industry where 86% of owners report growth isn’t one where your neighborhood studio is likely to vanish on you without warning, even amid headlines about rising costs across the fitness sector generally.
It’s also worth knowing as context the next time your studio raises prices or adds a new offering — rising costs and intensified competition are real pressures nearly every operator in this survey is navigating, not a sign that your particular gym is struggling uniquely.
What to watch in next year’s version of this survey
The real test of this data is whether it holds up — whether next year’s survey still shows 86% growth, or whether this year represents a peak that gets harder to sustain as competition keeps intensifying. Wellhub and HFA’s report doesn’t predict that outcome; it only documents where owners stood as of this September.
What the people actually running these businesses report is three things true at once: growing, improving margins, and still clearly feeling the competitive heat — no contradiction required to hold all three.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Womens Overview editors prior to publication.