Yup. I had one of the ballys memberships that locked in a cheap rate for life and was one of the dread customers actually showing up regular. What they did was make locations that where not called ballys total fitness but instead bally xyz. At least two other versions. Then they said the membership was not valid there. Of course that will only limit it a bit so they also started having premium group fitness classes and then canceling regular fitness classes so the premium was the only option. So like they stopped having the standard cardio kickboxing and the only option was the premium kwando. They pretty much got rid of all the standard one except for a bog standard aerobics like from the 80’s. I canceled before they put coin machines on the weight systems. It was easy to cancel but they wanted those memberships zeroed out so its not like they wanted me to keep it.
There’s an episode of Leverage where they’re able to “sell” an empty gym to a bad guy as a money laundering operation - since its total lack of visible attendees isn’t suspicious for its revenue.
Because Gyms make money on having many, many, people owning a gym membership and never using them.
They don’t make money on people getting jacked.
In fact, most, if not all, gyms would be incapable of handling all of their members regularly attending.
They were the original subscription model that every single capitalist in America is targeting right now.
Yup. I had one of the ballys memberships that locked in a cheap rate for life and was one of the dread customers actually showing up regular. What they did was make locations that where not called ballys total fitness but instead bally xyz. At least two other versions. Then they said the membership was not valid there. Of course that will only limit it a bit so they also started having premium group fitness classes and then canceling regular fitness classes so the premium was the only option. So like they stopped having the standard cardio kickboxing and the only option was the premium kwando. They pretty much got rid of all the standard one except for a bog standard aerobics like from the 80’s. I canceled before they put coin machines on the weight systems. It was easy to cancel but they wanted those memberships zeroed out so its not like they wanted me to keep it.
There’s an episode of Leverage where they’re able to “sell” an empty gym to a bad guy as a money laundering operation - since its total lack of visible attendees isn’t suspicious for its revenue.