The struggle our industry has gone through to only marginally nudge up the penetration rate suggests there remains a significant population subset who just don’t feel they belong in a health club. If you combine them with the legions of people who, for genuine work and family reasons, find it very difficult to attend our facilities, then there’s a huge group of people to whom online classes might appeal, provided the marketing message is right.

It needs a considered approach. As with activity tracking devices, there’s potential for this technology to provide an exit route from the gym. However, if suitably embraced, it could also be the ideal path to strengthen relationships with members – and could finally help us dent the perennial retention problem by extending member contact beyond the four walls of the club. 

If targeted towards non-members, the service has the potential to be a powerful prospecting tool, offering a try-before-you-buy option on the user’s terms. Once familiar with the club’s philosophy, comfortable with their own ability and satisfied they can commit to regular exercise, there should be a resultant steady stream of newbies to our health and fitness facilities.

Online classes could be sold as a pay-as-you-go service, thereby creating a whole new revenue generator for the club. A further benefit to this is that your club can be open for business on a 24-hour basis.

Research has shown that most people prefer to exercise in a group environment rather than alone: the great attraction of exercise classes lies in the primal urges that drive us to seek a sense of belonging, inclusion, community and social status.

If this is communicated to the individual through an online class service, I foresee many fitness journeys that may begin solo but that will then progress to us welcoming a new member through our doors. 

We believe in making the planet fitter by helping people fall in love with fitness, so they want to work out. Providing an option to work out and join an exercise class at home fits into this; there’s definitely demand for this service.

The Les Mills Global Consumer Fitness Survey (2013), conducted by Nielsen, shows that home exercise complements gym-based workouts, with 82 per cent of gym members or casual gym users also choosing to exercise at home. 

 Many streaming services are positioned as a club alternative, but Les Mills On Demand – which launched in June – is positioned as a club supplement. It gives our club partners another way to engage with members, and offers exercisers more flexibility and value.

Providing at-home digital exercise can also demonstrate a more complete offering from clubs, to attract new members and to help retain existing ones. 

Online classes can act as a lead generator too: our strategy is to introduce more new people to Les Mills workouts, then direct them towards live classes in clubs via our club locator function. Judging by anecdotal evidence taken from social media, this approach seems to be working.

The modern fitness member expects and demands flexibility, as well as solutions crafted and available at their fingertips anytime and anywhere.

Virtual fitness makes it possible to meet these demands, not only by making group fitness available within the club 24/7, but also by making it possible to reach members outside the gym.

Streaming exercise classes is a great example of this new consumer-centric way of delivery. By adding virtual fitness classes to their own apps, clubs can offer access to group fitness on members’ own consoles (TV, smartphones and tablets). Online streaming is a particularly good way of engaging the millennials, and having a brand presence on phones is particularly key to staying relevant.

High-end clubs generally absorb the cost in order to add value to memberships, whereas budget chains are using it as ancillary revenue. More could be made of this revenue stream if advertising were sold; it offers good potential to boost the bottom line.

Clubs are naïve if they think they’re not being affected by online gym memberships. If you’re not a digital business, you’re a dying business.

As more people are spending more time online and wearables are becoming more popular, health and fitness clubs need to stay relevant.

Mobile technology is going to play an increasingly important part in people’s lives – consumers are now spending more time using mobile than they do desktop – so we’ve created online yoga class portal mypureyoga.

Providing an online streaming service has advantages for both potential and existing members. Existing members can keep up their yoga practice while they travel, which means we retain our relationship with them while they’re away. We also allow non-members to access mypureyoga, as it allows us to engage with consumers who may feel too intimidated to enter a yoga studio’s class environment. Hopefully it will act as a stepping stone towards them coming in to the club.

It also gives us the opportunity to engage with consumers before we enter a new overseas market.

It’s very early days to say what the impact will be – I don’t have a crystal ball to predict it – but it’s something we can’t ignore. We’re setting ourselves up so that, if online streaming does take off, we’re there. We believe the growth potential is huge, probably exponential, and we want to make sure we’re positioned and ready to capitalise on the trend.

The online gym market – specifically paid content for TV and video – is growing very fast, at more than 70 per cent a year. It attracts a new and different consumer segment: people who are unable to visit a real gym for some reason, or who simply don’t want to; consumers who live outside of conurbation areas; and those who want to combine online and offline fitness.

This is why Fitness First Germany acquired online gym NewMoove in October 2014. We believe in creating as many opportunities as possible to engage with the consumer. But we realise, these days, this might need to be done digitally: people are searching for information online first. They also expect tailored services based on their personal data. For both, our industry needs answers: perfect information on websites; digital services like apps and trackers; and integrated solutions of machine, group, outdoor and online training so all data is captured.

Companies who meet these demands will grow faster than their competitors, and in the long term we will see market aggregation in the fitness sector. Investment in digital is expensive, so bigger chains will likely dominate, but smaller chains and clubs can gain access to digital through specialised providers.