HYROX affiliation costs about $150 a month. Lauren DiSessa at Shelton Athletics in Connecticut generated $6,000 in new revenue in her first 60 days. That’s a 19X return on her affiliation fee from just one Saturday class and a few simulation events.
There are gyms in the Two-Brain community generating $12,500 a month from HYROX. There are gyms netting $5,000 from a single afternoon sim.
On a recent episode of “Run a Profitable Gym,” Two-Brain CEO John Franklin sat down with Eric O’Neil, Head of Affiliates for HYROX (Americas), to talk about how gym owners can maximize their return on investment from affiliation.
HYROX just crossed 4,500 affiliates in North America—up from fewer than 1,500 a year ago—and the gyms seeing real revenue from it have done a lot more than just add a class to the schedule.
Events Are Your Biggest Revenue Lever and Your Best Marketing
A gym in Miami ran a sim and submitted it to HYROX for inclusion in the regional newsletter, which HYROX distributes to athletes and race-goers in the area. Almost immediately, 50 additional sign-ups came in from outside their gym. They hosted 100 people, charged $50 a ticket, and walked away with $5,000 from one afternoon.
That newsletter promotion is available to every HYROX affiliate. All you have to do is submit a description, a time and a sign-up link. HYROX will feature it in the newsletter for as long as you want. That’s free promotion to an audience that is already looking for a place to train and race. Eric says most affiliates don’t know this or don’t use it.
Lauren DiSessa’s open house followed a similar model. She announced a free workout in late January and ran it in early February, timed specifically to catch the buzz around the upcoming New York City and Boston races. Forty people showed up. Seventy percent were from outside the gym. She sold 13 packages on the spot using QR codes, then followed up by text and email with everyone who attended. Those two moves—a well-timed open house and a simple follow-up sequence—drove the bulk of her $6,000 in 60 days.
Events are an intake mechanism that converts on the spot. Running a class without running events is leaving your best conversion tool on the shelf.
The Race Calendar Is Your Business Calendar
Eric’s recommendation for HYROX affiliates: Find the nearest HYROX race, back-plan 12 to 16 weeks, and build your whole program inside that window. Group training schedule, sim cadence, in-gym challenges, marketing to current members and outreach to people in your community who already have a race ticket but no gym to train at.
That last group is larger than most gym owners realize. HYROX is selling out races in major cities across North America: 50,000 people will race in New York City this season alone. A significant portion of those athletes are not members of a gym. They signed up for a race, now they need somewhere to train and they’re actively looking. If your gym shows up—on the HYROX gym finder, in the newsletter, on social media with race prep content—you’re in the conversation. If it doesn’t, someone else is.
Eric also made a point worth sitting with: If 80% of your members can’t get into a race because tickets sold out, that’s an opportunity. Run a sim before the race as a lead-up. Then run one after for the people who didn’t get in. Run another in the off-season when there’s no local race for months and your members want the competition and community HYROX delivers. Every one of those events is revenue, retention and lead generation in one.
Personal Training Is an Underused Upsell
HYROX changes how members think about their training. Once someone has a race on the calendar and a time goal in mind, they stop thinking like a gym member and start thinking like an athlete. They want to fix their weakest station. They want to know if their pacing strategy makes sense. They want a coach.
The best HYROX affiliates have already built personal training options into their HYROX offering. Some are using HYROX as an entry point to introduce PT to members who’d never considered it before. Eric noted that some gyms are offering HYROX exclusively as personal training, with strong results.
If you’re running HYROX classes and not offering any kind of individual coaching for race prep, you’re missing revenue from the most motivated people in your building.
The Whole Connected Program
Eric put it plainly: The affiliates doing the most with HYROX are thinking about group training, personal training, events and marketing as one connected program, with each piece reinforcing the others.
A class builds the community. Events bring in new people and generate revenue. Personal training serves the members who want to go deeper. Marketing puts you in front of athletes who are already looking for you.
For the New York City race alone, more than 30 gyms are bringing over 50 members. Some are bringing over 100. Those gyms built a HYROX community over time by running a full, connected program.
Get the Full HYROX Affiliation Toolkit
We interviewed the Two-Brain gyms getting the best ROI on their HYROX affiliation and built their strategies into a free toolkit. Grab it here.
