Anytime, Orangetheory Eye Expansion in Europe’s Booming Fitness Market
Purpose Brands will pursue aggressive expansion in Europe for Anytime Fitness and Orangetheory, pointing to the market’s untapped potential in terms of fitness demand and gym penetration
COLOGNE, GERMANY – Purpose Brands sees significant potential for its two biggest entities – Anytime Fitness and Orangetheory Fitness – to expand across Europe, its executives shared.
Athletech News spoke with Purpose Brands CEO Tom Leverton and executive vice president of international development Sander van den Born during the FIBO 2025 trade show held in Germany, to get their thoughts on the fast-growing European fitness market.
Leverton, who was announced as Purpose Brands’ chief executive in November after the entity was formed following the high-profile merger of Anytime Fitness parent Self Esteem Brands and Orangetheory, notes that both Anytime and Orangetheory already are established international players, but they still have tons of room for growth in Europe.
“We have over 400 locations in Europe already, so that gives us a great amount of scale, but we’re still a relatively small player in the European market,” Leverton told ATN. “We’re not in the top 10.”
Purpose Brands is planning to change that math – Leverton says Anytime will continue opening gyms across Europe in the years ahead, while Orangetheory is finishing tweaks to optimize its studio model for the European market before pursuing aggressive expansion of its own.
“We see it as a big priority,” Leverton says of Europe. “That’s why (FIBO, Europe’s largest fitness industry event), is the first external conference I’ve gone to on behalf of Purpose Brands.”
The Case for a European Fitness Boom
Europe’s fitness market is surging, with continent-wide membership and revenue numbers hitting an all-time high, but it’s got plenty of potential for more growth, industry insiders believe. Only 8.9% of Europeans have a fitness membership, according to Deloitte and EuropeActive, a penetration rate that pales in comparison to the United States, where 25% of people belong to a gym, club or studio.
If more Europeans decide to join gyms and studios in the years ahead, the market should keep growing. EuropeActive and Deloitte project that there should be 100 million fitness memberships in Europe by 2030, up from 71.6 million in 2024.
Purpose Brands believes it can capture a large swath of that growth, especially as Europeans begin to seek more from their fitness experience than the low-frills, big-box gym environment that currently shapes the continent’s fitness scene.
Van den Born notes that high-volume, low-price (HVLP) operators like Basic-Fit, PureGym and others have long dominated the fitness market in Europe, but he believes there’s newfound room for brands that offer a more premium experience (albeit at a slightly higher price point).
“The European consumer is now used to the basic fitness experience, and they’re looking for one that’s more advanced, more coached and more personal,” van den Born told ATN.
“That’s where Anytime Fitness and Orangetheory come in,” he added.
Anytime offers high-tech perks such as SmartCoaching, which allows members to receive personalized data and recommendations inside of their member app, while Orangetheory naturally sits on the more premium end of the market as a boutique fitness brand.
Van den Born also sees a big opportunity for Anytime to open gyms in mid-sized European towns and cities, which he believes are currently underserved across the continent.
“If you look at Germany, we estimated how many 30 to 50,000 person-cities there are, and it’s a couple hundred,” he shared. “If you look at the gym penetration in those cities, it’s relatively low. Some of them only have one. That’s where you can come in with an Anytime, since we need less space than the big-box operators.”
A Well Thought-Out Expansion Plan
Anytime will look to expand its European presence in countries including Germany, France, Spain and Italy, where it already has footholds. The gym brand also hopes to make it big in Eastern Europe, a market that’s on the rise.
The Purpose Brands team will take a more measured approach when it comes to expanding Orangetheory across Europe, but soon it’ll be pursuing serious expansion for the popular group fitness brand, too.
“Orangetheory’s potential internationally is huge,” Leverton said, noting that the brand already has a sizable presence in countries including Japan. “Right now, we’re making a very specific effort to make sure we can design studios that are even more friendly internationally.”
“We’re looking at every piece of equipment to make sure we have a scalable international brand … adjusting it for the European market,” he added. “We’re almost done with that effort, and then we’ll be hitting the gas pedal to make sure we go out and find the right (master franchisees).”
Europe is highly promising, but Purpose Brands also has its eye on international expansion in other markets across the globe – Anytime Fitness is growing rapidly in India, while both Anytime and Orangetheory are having success in the Middle East, which has shown a huge appetite for fitness. Other concepts in the Purpose Brands portfolio, including The Bar Method, also have their sights set on global growth.
These international expansion efforts fall in line with Leverton’s ambitious growth goals for Purpose Brands as a whole over the next few years (plenty of U.S. expansion is in the works, too).
“We want 10 million members and 10,000 sites by 2030″ across the globe, Leverton said. “Right now, we’re at 7,000 sites and 6 million members.”