The CEO of VivaGym has a new war chest that’s enabling a rapid acceleration of growth. He speaks to Kate Cracknell

What’s the VivaGym proposition?
VivaGym is a low-cost gym operator with a purpose: to improve as many people’s lives as possible by making exercise affordable and fun.

Our price point and our vast network make fitness accessible to many more people, including younger generations. We attract a high number of first-timers in a country with a low penetration rate and with it create social value at scale.

What we do didn’t exist before in Spain, where the market was always dominated by mid-market and premium models. Large clubs with broad offerings were great value for money for families, but not actually low-cost. In creating a low-cost proposition, we have driven accessibility at an individual level.

I describe VivaGym as an aspirational low-cost operator. The quality of our gyms is arguably the best in the category, from build to look and feel to equipment. They’re well located, with long opening hours and around 70 live group exercise classes a week. In our staffing model, we have found a balance between efficiency and providing supervision. And all of this comes with no contract and the best price in the market, typically starting from €27.90 a month.

We drive meaning and purpose in other ways, too. From quality of construction to our ongoing quality of operation, we focus on sustainability. We also employ young people, giving many their first job, with secure long-term contracts and talent development at the heart of our culture.

Whether it’s our customers or our wider communities, our employees or our shareholders, we focus on creating value.

You joined in 2016. What’s happened since?
My time at VivaGym so far can be broken down into three phases – the first saw steady organic growth until January 2018, when we acquired Fitness Hut in Portugal. Our first venture in Portugal, this took us from 21 to 48 gyms. By the end of that year, we’d reached 63 gyms without any further acquisitions.

We initially expected to finish 2019 on 75–80 gyms after a smooth rate of organic openings, but in November we acquired Duet Fit’s 13 clubs in Barcelona to end the year on 91 gyms. We then added six gyms in Q1 2020 – four organic and two through the acquisition of Happy Gym in Majorca – to reach 97 gyms and were en route to reaching 120 by the end of that year.

Then COVID hit, marking the start of the second phase: a period of maintenance and patience. We went into COVID as market leader by number of members, which is the measure we focus on, but didn’t retain that status coming out the other side. We hadn’t grown, where others had.

In 2022 and 2023, we only grew from 97 to 104 gyms; when you’ve stopped your development pipeline, it takes a while to get it moving again. We then had no new openings in the first half of 2024 until we were acquired by Providence Equity Partners in June.

This marked the beginning of a huge acceleration in growth and an exciting third phase of my tenure at VivaGym.

In the second half of 2024, we grew from 104 gyms to 224 – 183 in Spain and 41 in Portugal – by acquiring 113 and opening five new gyms.

Those five new openings are evidence of the homework we’d done in preparation for our new investor and restarting our pipeline after the pandemic.

What brands have you acquired so far?
I already mentioned Fitness Hut, Duet Fit and Happy Gym, with Fitness Hut the first big step in our transformation. We’ve completed a further six acquisitions in 2024: 10 Smart Fit gyms, eight Macro Fit, four OneFit, 20 Fitup, one Fitness4all and the 70 clubs of Altafit.

Fitness Hut was a brand that had reshaped the manner of doing fitness in Portugal and we embraced learnings to enhance the value proposition at our Spanish clubs: its outstanding PT model and its functional gym floor group exercise space, for example. We were impressed by what its team had done so far.

As with all our acquisitions, though, we felt there were improvements we could bring to the business, from reviewing the cost structure and integrating our suite of technology to enhancing accountability through our culture of ‘management by commitment’.

The Altafit acquisition, completed in November 2024, is another transformational one. It allows us to deliver to so many more corners of Spain as there is very little overlap between our estates. Altafit’s assets are also good quality and benefit from a good management style, with a strong sense of purpose that permeates all the way down to the local teams.

The union of our two brands already enables us to bring a much stronger value proposition to the consumer than we could deliver separately. VivaGym will now bring its technology, sales and marketing expertise to enhance the commercial agenda at these clubs.

Do you rebrand the clubs you acquire?
In Portugal, we initially grew under the Fitness Hut brand, reaching 41 locations while we invested in the tech platform and aligning the member management system. By December 2024, they were all rebranded to VivaGym and are now operating under the VivaGym brand – and importantly, within the VivaGym culture.

I mentioned management by commitment before and this is central to our culture.

If you go back to ancient Greece, the aristocracy was expected to live by three principles: memory was about the ability and desire to learn; temperance was about self-control and doing the right thing; and honour was about the quest for perfection.

Management by commitment is based on this. It’s rooted in competence and ethical values. At every level of the business, from the CEO to our club managers, we share a dream of leadership for the right reasons. We want to do the right things right and strive for quality of growth. If we’re ever faced with a choice between quantity and quality, we immediately dismiss the opportunity. We need both. The absence of quality simply doesn’t provide for the sustainability and ambition we have at VivaGym.

What’s your vision for VivaGym?
We have a vision of being market leader, but that doesn’t have to mean market dominance. VivaGym and BasicFit both have over 200 gyms, but how relevant is that when Spain and Portugal have around 6,000 fitness clubs? This is not an industry to dominate; even the biggest players will only achieve an 8–10 per cent market share.

However, this is an industry in which, by developing strong brands and best practice, larger operators can inspire consumer interest and contribute to sector growth. This is what I mean by being a leader: taking a leadership role in an industry that needs a leader to help it grow.

What comes next for VivaGym?
For 2025 and 2026, the task is to fortify our position in Spain and Portugal. Our drive for organic growth will see us take more of a protagonist’s role than in our growth to date, including developing a lot of greenfield sites and we expect to open 100 new gyms over the next five years.

From 2027 we’ll look further afield, assessing opportunities in Europe and potentially in other areas of the world. There is work to be done!

I’ve always maintained a desire to have a million members in the VivaGym system and there’s plenty of opportunity. The penetration rate in Iberia is currently only around 10 per cent, which I can see growing to 15 per cent over the next few years. Meanwhile, even with 224 clubs, we’re still only present in 31 of Spain’s 50 major cities.

Of course, all of this growth will rely on strong results being achieved from our existing estate: like-for-like performance, successful integration of the gyms we’ve acquired and good deals being closed with landlords.

Revenue and EBITDA are sound and member numbers, although not yet back to pre-COVID levels, continue to rise. We have a strong focus on recovering previous members and connecting with new ones, engaging people with our value proposition from the moment they join and in as many different ways as possible.

We expect steady growth over the next 10 years. We’ll continue to innovate and provide a value proposition that attracts a huge number of members.

What are your long-term goals?
I would like VivaGym to maintain its strong growth and drive for quality and innovation during my tenure while still leaving my successor with plenty of space to grow.

Don’t let my white beard deceive you, though. VivaGym is one of the best things that has happened in my life and I still feel young and full of energy. After a painful period during the pandemic, we are resurgent and enjoying a new sense of vigour. I’m hugely engaged and will be committed to the business for as long as I feel I’m delivering.