How Many People Don’t Use Their Gym Membership!?!?
The value of a gym membership is directly correlated with how often it is used. If you have a $10 membership but you never use it then there is no value. Yet, thousands of people sign up for cheap memberships but don’t use them. The big globo gyms thrive off of this model.
There are roughly 61 million people with a gym membership in the U.S. Various studies show that anywhere from 50% to as many as 67% of people with a gym membership don’t use it. At an average cost of $60 per month this equates to $1.8-$2.4 billion dollars in wasted dues per month! Yearly this is as much as $28 billion dollars.
Many gyms thrive off of the model of signing folks up and hoping they don’t come. In fact, it is reported that many gyms need 10 times the amount of members as they could actually handle in order to make their business work.
A CrossFit gym is quite the opposite. At 410 CrossFit we email, text or call members when they don’t show. We work hard to build a support system that keeps people engaged and coming in on a regular basis. To that end, we are able to destroy the industry average on attendance. About 12% of our members do not use their membership every month and a majority of those folks travel and are on a pack of classes rather than a recurring charge.
Why is this? Why do we have such a higher attendance rate? Why do we want a higher attendance rate? It is because we care about our members success. And we know that in order to succeed at anything you have to be present. We want you to use your membership and we want you to reap the rewards of your work. In other gyms they don’t want everyone to use their memberships. In essence the folks that don’t come are subsidizing the membership for those that do. A good model for the business owner but a bad model for the consumer.
We find it better to recruit new members based on stories of success and happy customers. We don’t recruit on the basis of having the cheapest membership and an attitude of we don’t care if you show as long as you keep paying. Ultimately, you need to choose the gym the works best for you. One that you will use and one that helps you reach your goals.