Hyrox changes hands as rivals circle

Hyrox has a new majority owner, and its founders are part of it. On September 8, 2026, Infront Sports & Media completed the sale of its majority stake to a consortium led by LVMH-affiliated private equity firm L Catterton, alongside co-founders Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste. WndrCo, the investment firm co-founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, also took part. Infront, the Swiss sports marketing group owned by China’s Wanda Group, had controlled Hyrox since October 2022. Neither side disclosed terms, but several outlets, including Bloomberg, reported that the deal values Hyrox at about 600 million euros ($698 million). In the 2025-26 season, the Hamburg-based series staged more than 100 events and drew more than 1.4 million participants and 1.5 million spectators, according to Infront. For Wei Kan (甘伟志), founder of brand consultancy Conduit Asia and a former brand director at Nike Greater China, the ownership split is the detail that matters. “The interesting part is the founders say that they ended up with the majority,” he said. “So the people setting the pace are the ones who built it. Whether they can hold that when the investors want growth is the open question.” The companies did not disclose how the stake is divided. That tension, between the founders who built Hyrox’s training culture and the investors now funding its expansion, will shape the company’s next phase, including in China. Why Hyrox race photos became a status symbol on Xiaohongshu In the fall of 2025, Beijing resident Li Mengyao (李梦瑶) came across a Xiaohongshu (also known as RedNote) post showing a woman in boxer braids standing beside the gong at a Hyrox finish line, captioned “First time in my life, I hit the gong.” Li soon began training in earnest. “The biggest motivation for sticking with it, honestly, was taking photos to post on Xiaohongshu,” she said in an interview with Chinese business outlet Jiemian. Those photos come at a price. Hyrox’s official photographers shoot the course, and organizers sell the images for 120 RMB ($18) each or 214 RMB ($32) for a set, Chinese financial news outlet Lanjing reported in May. Freelance photographers charge 300 RMB to 900 RMB ($45 to $134) to follow a single competitor. For participants like Li, the picture is proof of a timed result that a gym-mirror selfie can’t offer. Chinese commentators have been quick to read Hyrox as a status marker. Lanjing described a finish as a fashionable credential among fitness influencers and enthusiasts. In an essay published by business news site Huxiu, one writer observed that posts about muscle, body fat and race medals had overwhelmed photos of children in the writer’s own WeChat Moments feed. The essay argued that simply taking part shows both the discipline to train and the money and time to spare. Vanke founder Wang Shi (王石), 75, is the most prominent example. He has raced at Hyrox’s Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chengdu stops this year. In Shanghai in May, he and his doubles partner won their age group and qualified for the World Championships. How Hyrox made hybrid fitness racing accessible to Chinese gym-goers Accessibility is built into the format. Hyrox sets no cutoff time. Competitors choose among singles, doubles and four-person relays, each division with its own weight standards, and are ranked within age groups. Starts go off in waves, usually 10 minutes apart, and Jiemian put the completion rate near 100%. Early marketing in China worked against that message. The first promotions used footage from overseas races, but the images of heavily muscled elite athletes made the event look out of reach to ordinary gym-goers, Jiemian reported. The team stopped emphasizing elite competition and took Hyrox into gyms as regular training classes and community events. The barrier that remains is price. Individual entries run from 638 RMB ($95) to nearly 800 RMB ($119), depending on the stop and how early athletes register. Once they have paid, finishing is close to assured, which is what makes the result worth posting. Hyrox’s global leaderboard gives it an edge over local rivals such as BTWE A Hyrox result counts beyond China, and that is the company’s clearest advantage in the market. Stations, equipment specifications and timing rules are the same in Shanghai as in New York, and results from every stop feed one leaderboard spanning more than 60 cities, according to Chinese news site Guancha. Participants are buying entry into an international competition, something a domestic rival cannot offer at launch. Growth has followed. Hyrox’s first mainland race, held in Beijing in November 2024, drew fewer than 2,000 competitors, Jiemian reported. Eighteen months later, the May stop in Shanghai drew more than 10,000. In August, the Chengdu debut, Hyrox’s first race in western China, drew more than 8,000 athletes. Local competitors are testing how much that advantage is worth. One of them, BetterWe (BTWE), is an indoor hybrid fitness race started by Sam Hui, a former Hyrox China head coach and chief strength coach of the Chinese Basketball Association’s Beijing Shougang team. It held its first event June 20-21 in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. According to sponsor SKG, the format keeps familiar stations such as the sled push and burpee broad jump but changes the intensity, pacing and equipment, and adds “guofeng,” or Chinese national-style, design. Some of the early demand came from Hyrox’s own reputation. One Changsha resident said she had bought a spectator ticket because she heard BetterWe was the closest thing to Hyrox in the city, Sanxiang Metropolis Daily reported. The test for BetterWe is whether local execution can offset the draw of an international name. UK challenger Athx targets Hyrox finishers with 2027 China debut Athx poses a more direct challenge because it arrives with international credentials of its own. The UK hybrid fitness competition launched in 2023. On July 29, it announced its first China events, planned for Beijing and Shanghai in 2027. Hyrox started with races in China and built its gym network afterward. Athx is starting with coaches: on the day of the announcement, coaches in Beijing completed its first Chinese certification course, Jiemian reported. Its format departs from Hyrox’s by design. An Athx race runs about 2.5 hours through six timed zones. Three are scored: a strength test of heavy barbell lifts, an endurance test alternating running with rowing and a closing conditioning circuit. The others are a warm-up and two breaks for refueling and recovery. It also leaves out the gymnastics and Olympic weightlifting that are staples of CrossFit. Co-founder Ollie Marchon said in February that Athx “represents a natural next step for anyone progressing on their training journey,” in comments published by fitness and wellness magazine Sustain Health. In China, Jiemian identified that audience as Hyrox finishers who want a heavier strength test, the same repeat participants Hyrox’s gym and event model depends on. Jiemian also argued that, with China’s hybrid fitness market still expanding, the two are more likely to split it into tiers than compete head-on for now. Puma, Adidas, Nike and On Running chase hybrid training footwear Puma has backed Hyrox since its first race in Hamburg and became its global partner in 2023. In October 2025, Puma extended the deal early through 2030 and added title rights to the Hyrox World Championships. It set up a standalone training unit, separate from running, on February 2. On the company’s February 26 earnings call, CEO Arthur Hoeld said Hyrox was a “lighthouse” partnership, according to Sporting Goods Intelligence. Training still accounts for a single-digit share of Puma’s revenue, but Hoeld said the partnership’s strategic value outweighs its immediate financial return. Adidas, which has never held official Hyrox status, signed a four-year global exclusive partnership with Athx at the end of 2025 and has launched its Adizero Dropset hybrid training shoes. Nike is releasing the Hybrid RN, the first shoe in its new Nike Hybrid line, in China on September 24, two weeks ahead of its global launch. Swiss running brand On has developed the Cloud X Tempo Pro, its first shoe built for hybrid racing. Hyrox’s licensed gym network in China grows to 500 partners Gyms carry Hyrox’s model between races. Mainland China had a little over a dozen Hyrox partner gyms at the start of 2025 and nearly 200 by year-end, according to Lanjing. By May 14, the count had reached 500, Yuan Fang (袁放), head of Hyrox China, said in an interview with Lanjing. A license costs $1,500 a year, according to Jiemian, and gyms need to meet only basic space and equipment standards, according to Chinese sports business outlet Lanxiong Sports. Only licensed gyms may run official Hyrox classes. Yuan said in an interview with Jiemian that tickets remain Hyrox’s main source of revenue in China but that gyms would become more important over time. Chains have moved quickly. Savage, founded in Shenzhen, expanded to Beijing and Shanghai in 2025, arriving around the same time as Hyrox and quickly adding Hyrox training, according to Guancha. Supermonkey has folded Hyrox prep into the regular schedule at some of its studios, according to Jiemian. Hyrox’s official WeChat mini program lists classes at Savage, Pure Fitness and Supermonkey at about 100 RMB ($15) a session. LeFit said in comments to Guancha that facility and space limits mean only Lovefitt, its strength training gym brand, runs Hyrox prep classes so far. Less than two years after its mainland debut, Hyrox no longer has the category to itself. The question is whether it can keep its core participants, the repeat competitors who pay for gym training, coaching and gear between races, as Athx and local events such as BetterWe try to win them over. What gym renewals and ticket resales reveal about Hyrox’s staying power in China Whether Hyrox’s popularity lasts will depend on commercial restraint, Wei said. If licensing and pricing are pushed too hard, too early, a real training culture can turn into a one-season fad, even if the format itself holds up. Renewals at licensed gyms are the earliest signal to watch. Each renewal means an operator has decided Hyrox classes pay for themselves, so a slowdown would show up there before it reaches ticket sales. Repeat registration matters as much, because growth that depends on first-timers is more fragile than growth driven by athletes who come back for another race. Ticket demand gives a faster read. At the Shanghai stop in May, spectator tickets with a face value of 50 RMB to 60 RMB ($7 to $9) were reselling for 150 RMB to 400 RMB ($22 to $60) by the afternoon of the final day. Early-bird entries for a Beijing race sold out in under 10 minutes, according to Lanjing, which reported both figures. Tracked from stop to stop, those numbers will show whether demand is still outpacing supply. If resale premiums shrink and entries stop selling out, interest is cooling before Hyrox’s own figures show it. Despite those risks, Wei is optimistic. “I’m positive on this. It gets people training and it’s good for the industry,” he told Jing Daily. The founders, now in partnership with L Catterton, have set out their priorities. In the deal announcement, Toetzke said Hyrox would focus on its Olympic ambitions, on bringing millions more people to the start line and on building new products. In August, Hyrox India head Deepak Raj said the organization was aiming for a place at the 2032 and 2036 Olympic Games, according to Reuters. Each goal depends on athletes who keep coming back.

Hyrox changes hands as rivals circle

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Hyrox changes hands as rivals circle

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