I’m an advocate for capitalism. It’s far from perfect, but it has created extraordinary opportunities for people from almost every background to build businesses, create wealth, employ others and forge their own path.

I enjoy owning a business alongside my business partner, Russell Valler, and through Black Raccoon Consulting we work every day with entrepreneurs who share that ambition. We know what it means to invest your money, time and reputation in something you believe in, and we understand the drive to compete and win.

Competition isn’t a bad thing. It drives innovation, challenges complacency, raises standards and, when it works, creates better products for customers. But something has always puzzled me about how we compete in fitness.

What happens when our determination to beat each other stops the industry itself from growing?

We’re Competing for the Same Minority

The 2025 State of the UK Fitness Industry Report puts the UK at around 11.3 million members, £6.5 billion in revenue and a penetration rate of 16.6%. Impressive numbers. But look at it another way: if around 17% of people belong to a gym, more than 80% don’t.

That’s a huge population who either aren’t interested in what we offer, don’t think gyms are relevant to them, tried and left, or simply haven’t been persuaded yet. Despite that, much of our marketing energy goes on fighting over people who already exercise.

We open a gym and immediately look at the membership down the road. We target competitors’ followers on Facebook and Instagram, advertise outside their doors and discount to make people switch. I’ve seen budget clubs park advertising vans outside independents and campaigns that boil down to “leave them and join us.”

For an individual business, I understand the logic. Persuading someone already spending £40 a month to spend it with you is easier than converting someone who’s never considered a gym. But collectively, where does that take us? We’re fighting over slices of the same small pie instead of asking how to make the pie bigger.

Competition and Collaboration Aren’t Opposites

I’m not saying gyms should stop competing. If another club delivers a better service or experience, everyone around them should raise their game. The mistake is assuming competition and collaboration can’t coexist.

There’s an established concept called coopetition: businesses compete in some areas and deliberately collaborate in others because it creates more value for everyone. Sony and Samsung collaborated on LCD technology while fighting hard in consumer electronics. Car makers have shared technology development while competing in the showroom. They didn’t stop caring about market share. They recognised some challenges are better solved together.

Collaborating to grow a market doesn’t mean you stop competing for your share of it.

Farmers Worked This Out Generations Ago

Farmers are competitors too, yet agricultural cooperatives have existed in Britain for generations. They pool purchasing power, market produce collectively, share infrastructure and negotiate from a stronger position.

Fram Farmers started in 1960 when a small group of farmers pooled their purchasing. Today it supports more than 1,400 farming businesses. And agriculture deals with genuinely finite resources: limited land, limited harvest.

Fitness doesn’t have that problem. We have tens of millions of potential customers who aren’t members anywhere, yet we often behave as if the only way to grow is to take a member from the club three miles away.

What if We Changed the Message?

Picture five gyms in one town: an independent strength gym, a budget gym, a full-service health club, a functional fitness box and a boutique studio. Today each spends thousands saying slightly different versions of the same thing: no joining fee, first month free, six weeks for £49, better kit, cheaper prices, more classes.

Now imagine that for one month a year they put their individual offers aside and promote one shared message: Let’s Get Our Town Moving.

They run a community fitness weekend where every facility opens its doors. The strength gym introduces beginners to resistance training, the studio offers Pilates, the leisure centre promotes swimming, the functional box runs beginner sessions and the health club offers health checks. Their differences become an advantage, because someone who hates the idea of a traditional gym might discover something they love.

The message is no longer “our gym is better than theirs”. It’s “being more active could improve your life, and there’s an option here that works for you.” And it’s aimed at people outside our market, not just those already in it.

The Commercial Opportunity Is Enormous

The 2025 figures use a UK population of around 67.9 million. If the sector lifted penetration by five percentage points, from roughly 17% to 22%, that’s about 3.4 million extra members.

At just £25 a month, that’s around £85 million in extra membership revenue every month, or more than £1 billion a year, before PT, small-group training, specialist programmes, food and drink and retail.

I’m not saying every gym should abandon acquisition campaigns. I’m saying the market available to us is vastly bigger than the one we spend so much time fighting over. There’s an enormous harvest out there. Perhaps we could spend a bit less time taking crops from the farm next door and a bit more cultivating land nobody’s using.

What Could Local Collaboration Look Like?

It doesn’t need complicated agreements or sharing sensitive commercial data. Local operators can work together and still compete hard:

• Joint community activity campaigns. Promote physical activity rather than memberships, with each club contributing activities that suit its expertise and sharing the cost and reach.
• Coordinated open weekends. Gyms, studios, leisure centres and activity providers open their doors at the same time so residents can try different options and find one that suits them.
• Inter-club events and competitions. Local fitness leagues, charity challenges and team events let members represent their club while building excitement around exercise.
• Collaborative corporate wellbeing. Instead of five clubs pitching the same employers separately, offer a broader programme where staff choose between swimming, strength, classes, Pilates and more.
• Shared education and resources. Independents can collaborate on staff development, guest speakers, recruitment, community education and selected purchasing, without giving up their competitive edge.

The principle is simple: collaborate where it grows the market, then compete on who delivers the best experience once people are in it.

Maybe We’re Targeting the Wrong Competitor

Some will say this is naive. Maybe human nature makes it hard. We’re wired to protect resources and be suspicious of anyone after the same thing. That made sense when survival depended on scarce food and territory. But we’re not fighting over the last watering hole, and fitness isn’t short of potential customers.

Maybe the gym down the road isn’t our biggest competitor. Our real competitors are inactivity, low confidence, poor understanding of exercise, bad past experiences and the belief that gyms are for people who are already fit. Our competitor is the person at home thinking, “A gym isn’t for someone like me.” Those problems affect every operator, whether membership is £20 or £120 a month.

Some businesses are already showing what happens when you look beyond the traditional gym customer. Studio35, for example, has built a proposition for people who often don’t identify with conventional gyms. That’s genuine category growth: a new customer, not one moved from one provider to another.

We Need to Grow the Category

Successful industries know there are two battles going on at once: individual businesses compete for share, and the whole industry needs people to want the category in the first place.

Fitness has an extraordinary proposition. We help people become stronger, healthier and more confident. We reduce isolation, build communities, help people stay independent as they age and improve physical and mental wellbeing. Yet we often reduce all that to “No joining fee this weekend.”

I’m not calling for the end of competition. I want ambitious operators to compete, innovate and build brilliant businesses. Black Raccoon exists to help businesses grow and become more profitable. But if 83% of the population sits outside our market, our biggest opportunity can’t just be persuading someone to cancel at Gym A and join Gym B. We need to understand why millions haven’t joined either, and some of those barriers are too big for any one operator to tackle alone.

Compete for market share, absolutely. But collaborate to grow the market itself. Sometimes the smartest way to get a bigger slice isn’t to take someone else’s. It’s to work together to bake a much bigger pie.

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Want help putting this into practice in your gym? Black Raccoon Consulting are gym and fitness business consultants with over 25 years’ industry experience in sales, marketing, member retention and operations. Book your free 45-minute business call or explore our services.

Ryan Charlesworth, Founder, Black Raccoon Consulting