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Can Gyms Survive Covid-19?
Considering indoor spaces are at a higher risk for Covid-19 transmission, and considering people go to the gym to huff and puff and sweat, the brick-and-mortar fitness industry has taken a serious hit. Writer Natalia Mehlman Petrzela reports for Marker:
Seven months in, the situation looks dire for gyms. The leading industry association, the International Health, Racquet, and Sportsclub Association, estimates that Covid-19 will cause an industry contraction of $15.6 billion and that 25% of the nation’s 40,000 to 50,000 gyms will close their doors for good. It’s a sobering and sudden reversal of decades of uninterrupted, inevitable growth in brick-and-mortar fitness, valued at more than $30 billion earlier this year. Even as people increasingly shopped, dated, and worked online, fitness seemed like a final frontier of the IRL economy: It’s why big-box gyms were the last hope as anchor tenants for dying malls. But in March 2020, Covid-19 changed everything.
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