HYROX: Building a global phenomenon

0:05Hello everyone and welcome back to another edition of Streamtime Sports. I'm your host Nick Meacham, CEO here at SportsPro. Now today's episode is all about a sports property that has over two and a half million athletes in 2025 alone. For context, that's more than every world marathon combined. Not one marathon, all of them put together right across the globe. We're talking today about High Rocks, what some might describe as a new generation CrossFit and has taken the world by storm. Now, for those that aren't familiar with the format, it's eight different stations with eight one-kilometer runs in between each station.

0:43That's it. But High Rocks is so much more than just a competition or even a fitness trend. It's a definition of mass participation that is frankly unprecedented. it entered. They've gone from a handful of events in Hamburg back in 2017 to 105 races last season and one half million athletes the previous year, up from 570 ,000 the year before that. With that incredible growth, the money is following that growth with reported revenues of 140 million last year, up from 40 million the year before. And there's even word that there's more investment to come into the business. Now, it's growing even so fast that there's even talk about it becoming an Olympic sport.

1:27Now, I've always been interested in the mass participation space, especially from a business perspective. Most of its revenue is generated from the participants, not from licensing revenues, but the rest of the sports industry. And then you can layer on the licensing to really make this a lucrative business that has a global footprint and is usually pretty profitable from day one. So just what is Hirox and what is the strategy underpinning it? Well, I caught up with Douglas Grimmin, who's Hirox's chief growth officer on stage at Sports Pro London. We got into the commercial model, why they're deliberately not chasing a broadcast deal yet, they're not spending money on marketing and paid advertising, and what it really is going to take to become an Olympic sport.

2:10It's such an interesting business and Douglas has done a great job here of sharing real insights about the commercial journey. So without further ado, here's me talking to Douglas Gremmen on stage at Sportswear London about the business of High Rocks. I hope you enjoy.

2:31So for those that aren't familiar with High Rocks, just give us a set of the same. What is it exactly?

2:36Douglas Gremmen:Well, as you could see a little bit, we tried to create a fitness event. That was the origin. the fitness event was based on running and functional movements to really allow for the average gym goer to have a sport to train for so as we started out in 2017 with the first event 500 athletes it's grown into pretty much a global movement in a global sport so we're not only trying to create a new events category we're actually redefining a new sport so talk us through the nuts and bolts so what happens at an event what do i what do i have to do if i sign up i'm scared now after seeing that the intensity of it but what would what would i have to do if i was to do a high rocks well the mindset when we created the sport or when christian tutska created the sport it was always around what do marathons do really well what do have marathons do really well which was to lower the barrier to entry so we have a pair of running shoes a progressive training plan everybody can get ready for a high rocks race right you just need to find a local gym to go and train in and get your running shoes on and go and run outside but the mindset was always the barrier to entry has to be as low as possible but you are still working towards something it's not just another workout it is putting an event on the calendar train for it have a purpose in your sense of training and therefore really committing to the sport rather than this being a one-off event that you might enjoy as a as a bucket list item um so you joined very early on in the journey i looked at some of the numbers there so from 24 and 25 there were 74 races events.

4:01Now, it was 105 in the last season. Event days, 147. Then this year, 310 athletes from 570 ,000 to one and a half million. One and a half million, that's quite a hefty number. So what's in store for 2627?

4:18Douglas Gremmen:Well, we're fortunate enough it's been triple digit growth year on year, right? So in 2026, calendar years, we're looking at over two and a half million athletes around the world and it's sometimes hard to put it into context uh but i think one number that really resonated with me it's bigger than all the world marathons added together and then we're not only talking about london we're talking about every single marathon in the world uh from london with an unbelievable 50 000 plus athletes to your local 5 000 10 000 events so having 2.4 2.6 million athletes participating in over 50 countries next year is um yeah it's something we're pinching ourselves at.

4:56So you're on track to basically a nine, well, depending on what currency, a nine figure business this year, you have a mix of the audience mix was quite interesting or the participant. It's pretty much 50-50 between male and female. Is that something that's been intentionally a focus or it's just happened organically?

5:12Douglas Gremmen:It's hard to say if anything is deliberate. The mindset was low barrier to entry so that everybody can compete in it. And I think we're extremely proud that the organic growth of the sport has really welcomed the male and the female athlete in equal terms, right? So we're really on that 50 % mark. We've seen massive, massive uptake by the female population. They love doing doubles, right? They find a counterpart, hold themselves accountable and train together. And on the male side, we see a little bit more individuals racing. And it's really nice to see that there's something there for everybody across all age groups as well.

5:43So talk about the business then behind it. How are you making it to generate the revenue you need to keep growing?

5:49Douglas Gremmen:Well, we are constantly growing, right? So in the end and I think that's the beauty of mass participation I'm sure there's a couple of mass participation sports organizers are out here and Christian Tutska our founder and CEO came from 30 40 years of mass participation he already already understood the importance of being able to get 10 ,000 people to the start line and the economics around that so the business model is pretty self-sufficient just on the athlete numbers alone and then everything else is a really nice on top with pretty high margins right so when you look at sponsorship the gym partnerships and pretty much our 40 to 50 million merchandising business at the moment, those are all incremental to what has already created a very stable foundation on the 1.5 growing to 2.4 million athletes around the world.

6:32So if you're looking at the revenue mix there, you've got obviously participation revenue, sponsorship revenue, merchandising revenue, not much. We haven't really lent into the broadcast media side as of yet, which we'll touch on a bit about in a second. What does that mix look like? I'm guessing majority of the revenue comes from participation contributions.

6:49Douglas Gremmen:Yeah, I think honestly our sponsorship to athlete ratio was probably the lowest possible within mass participation sports, right? So I think that's something we've really improved. We've gone now almost to 15 % sponsorship versus mass participation. So I think that balance is getting better. But the whole grunt of it is still 55 % to 65 % participants and spectators at events. So on that sponsorship front, partnership front, what's the mix like between endemic and non-endemic to the fitness industry? It's been an unbelievable journey where we're super proud that we had our founding partners. We had Red Bull on from day one.

7:26We've had Puma on from day one.

7:28Douglas Gremmen:They've really laid the foundation. They've pretty much renewed three times already. They've now committed for the next five years. And for them, they've also really focused on this as a sports category rather than as, hey, we're sponsoring now another events company. I mean, that has built the foundation for us to go out much more positively and aggressively to the wider and the non-endemic market and be able to bring non-fitness brands on board. And in the next two to three months, you'll see some big names really tapping into that healthy fitness consumer of which there's a billion plus in the world, right?

7:59Douglas Gremmen:Because the whole fitness market was so fragmented. If you as a brand wanted to get involved in fitness, you didn't know where to start. I think High Rocks, by creating the sport around fitness, has at least given a vehicle for brands to tap into it outside, of course, your low-hanging fruit in the Red Bulls and the Pumas and in the equipment companies and the nutrition companies, etc., who are extremely important. But for us, transitioning from a fitness company to a global sports phenomenon, we really need those tier one global non-endeming brands. I mean, one of the challenges, obviously, being a global business is the fact that you're global, you're in so many different markets.

8:34Just talk about some of the challenges you have to overcome in making sure you've got a proposition that can work right across the world. Because obviously, each market, many global brands do split up their strategies market by market rather than having a global approach, right?

8:49Douglas Gremmen:Well, it's not only a challenge for them. It's also a challenge for us, right? Because we're literally in every single corner of the world. We're operating fully in India. We have 10 events this year in China. We're in South America. So the ability to find brands that are willing to activate, not only willing, but able to activate globally is the biggest challenge. And obviously Red Bull is absolutely the front runner there being able to unlock their ground marketing team in every corner of the world, which is phenomenal. But this is also where we're learning every day, what are the rights that we're allocating to the actual event?

9:20Douglas Gremmen:What are the global rights and assets that we're creating? What is the content strategy that might make it a little bit easier for global brands to tap into other rights and benefits that are not necessarily equating into a very heavy on-ground investment in Shenzhen, as an example? So the High Rocks brand is really flying high in terms of its perception and position right now. You've lent into creating a whole range of merchandising, revenue streams, licensing as well. Talk a bit about the gym program that you've created. There's now High Rocks gyms all over the place where I have a licensing or affiliation.

9:52What is that model that you've gone with there?

9:54Douglas Gremmen:I think the beauty about the sport of fitness racing is that the infrastructure was already there, right? We don't have to build pedal courts to meet the demand. There is already probably 400, 500 ,000 gyms in the world. It's nice to compare that to 30 ,000 golf clubs around the world, right? So we're tapping into an infrastructure that already has over a billion members. So for us, the infrastructure was already there. We just needed to find a way to build the sport, to educate the coaches, to give them the tools they need to build the equipment that they need in order to service their member.

10:25Douglas Gremmen:So by able to kind of create this affiliation program, which is much more than just giving them the brand association, we've been able to really penetrate the sport and create stickiness in the gyms, which is going to hopefully create the long-term sustainability as gyms start investing into high rock spaces so starting almost two years ago we started really aggressively rolling out the affiliate plan we're now 15 000 gyms around the world growing by around five to six percent per month so by the end of this year we'll be close to 23 24 000 gyms that are servicing their members with high rocks glasses high rocks equipment etc and that gets the flywheel going right because then we're not only serving the athlete that comes to our events but we always talk about touching 100 million lives of people that are going to their local group class because they love the sport, they love the energy, they love the camaraderie, they love the coach.

11:13Douglas Gremmen:And all of a sudden, this becomes like your tennis club or golf club, but it's your gym. And I think that's been the massive transition in mindset of gyms moving away from just being a real estate play with some equipment into actually a social third space community hub. You've had astronomical growth in place for this year already. What have been some of those challenges along the way that you've seen and faced to keep keep on track look the way the company grew and i think that's what i think we're most proud of it was really we got we got our hands dirty we were knocking on gym doors you know we were here in london in 2021 just every gym we could open engage the conversation educate the market it was very much from the grassroots up and i think that's put us in a very good position to really be able to penetrate into new markets however as we scale now we're about 400 employees around 11 different regional offices maintaining that quality control getting that founder mindset all the way down to that marketing manager down in shanghai how do you able to maintain that quality control of the events that you saw in the video because the internal challenges that we're facing and scaling this company and how we're running this company none of us have done this before right so we're really learning as we're doing we're building the ship as we're flying it so it's been really interesting to see kind of the internal challenge as well as of course the market challenges but we're fortunate enough that the market has really welcomed high rocks all over the world in a similar fashion so how are you managing talk about the scale of the company because to manage all those clubs and all those relationships i imagine you've had to grow pretty quickly on that front so what's the what's the head count look like and the the structure there yeah i think and it's it's such an interesting conundrum a little bit, because I think we have the advantage that we're pretty much the first sport that's being built from the ground up in the digital age.

13:01Douglas Gremmen:So we're really able to leverage existing technologies and not be kind of hijacked by past infrastructures, past federations, past database silos that really make it impossible to scale at the rate we're scaling it. We're really able to build it conform our needs, meeting today's technology availabilities, right? So managing our global 15 ,000 gyms, probably in the past, you needed 70 to 80 different account managers. We're doing that now with a team of 20 to 25 people, but a pretty comprehensive software technology company behind us to service that. The same way we're looking at customer service, right?

13:38Douglas Gremmen:The amount of nitty gritty emails I'm still getting in our LinkedIn inbox about people wanting to change their name or not getting hold of customer service. Those are the things we're definitely needing to improve and allow for technology to really facilitate the scale process. But obviously growing from what was still a very manageable 40 to 50 people organization to now 380, 400 people around the world is challenging us in a good way, but it's also keeping us up at night. I bet. Obviously you received investment from Infront a few years ago, which is now the majority shareholder. Do you think that you'll need to generate more investment to continue the momentum and growth?

14:17Or do you think now you've got such a runway with the participation now that's coming in that you won't be needing to seek that further?

14:24Douglas Gremmen:Yeah, look, I think, hopefully nobody from in front is in the room, but obviously their first investment was pretty light compared to the size and scope of the organization. And mass participation is interesting because you're collecting the money relatively early. I mean, let's look at New York. We went live around six to eight weeks ago. We sold 52 ,000 tickets in a space of 12 hours. Most of our event costs are not until June, July when the event is actually taking place. So we've been cash flow positive pretty much from day plus one. So we've been able to grow this company, this global brand on a pretty profitable cash flow positive business line.

15:00Douglas Gremmen:So I think in that sense, to build a global brand that is profitable, but also has no debt is something that we're also extremely proud of. So we mentioned earlier that there hasn't been a focus on going all in on creating a dedicated media strategy around doing right steals and the like. And there's just been a focus on, I guess, organic. And you haven't really had to use it so much to sell tickets or sell places. What is the strategy currently around media? Is there a goal and objective to productify and make supplementary entertainment products to layer on top and continue the visibility? Look, it's a multifaceted approach.

15:35Douglas Gremmen:I think it's important to look back on how we marketed originally, right? We never really invested into influencers. We never invested into paid advertising campaigns. We let the athletes in the room or at racing tell the story, right? And it's obviously grows organically from 400 people in this room, influencing 800 other people to race. And all of a sudden we had tens of billions of impressions on Instagram. So our top of funnel approach has always been extremely important and also why we kept a very open mindset to how we deliver what we call our pro over elite 15 series okay we want to make it available what we're learning while doing right we're building out the pro series how does that work in our infrastructure every time we do a pro series event it's biting into the mass participation sport so it is a significant investment every time we're letting 15 elite athletes run around in circles and do the sport so we've really thought about okay how do we accommodate the growth how do we get the brand out there without tying ourselves to global distribution deals because we don't think the product is ready yet we have about a two to three year pipeline of what we want to develop from a pro sports perspective and obviously has been in the news a little bit as well as that our olympic aspirations to be ready by 2032 to be a fully serviced olympic sport is all those small stepping stones that we're taking to get there in the right way but i think we're in the luxury position not to have to rush distribution revenues and get a half harder tv product out there we truly believe in the tv product it's 60 60 minutes end-to-end racing 15 guys and girls at the start line the winner wins it's pretty easy for the world to understand in those 50 now 52 minutes which is mind-boggling to see how fast those guys are those guys are going um so they haven't been focused you you're giving sorry you're relying on organic basically reach through the participants to give a lot of visibility which sounds sounds great are you doing anything specifically to help enable that are you giving them access to galleries or access to a dam which has all the requisite things that they can use to enable that or you're just letting them create their own content uh very freely old school photography has obviously been amazing i'm sure many of you had their uh instagram timeline be infiltrated by friends and family racing high rocks for some reason everybody looks good in those pictures i think we've got absolutely the right filter function that everybody looks uh fit and ready to go but obviously we're looking at new technologies we're looking at how do we enhance and how do we move away from photography into 30 second reels and all of those aspects but you also have to think about how do we scale this globally because implementing technology in london excel is very different to implementing technology in brazil and we really want to ensure that we give the same customer experience no matter where they race high rock so we're a little bit hesitant going all in just because the impact is so big when you have to do it across 105 events it might be twenty thousand dollars to invest in a camera solution but do twenty five twenty thousand dollars times 105 the impact becomes pretty significant the revenues potential of course is there but we want to make sure that we are completely technical proof so you've had an incredible interest in the in participation um there's i think there's waiting lists in pretty much every every market around that um obviously with anything launches there can be a buzz and excitement about how do you make sure that you keep the product and the brand and the messaging fresh so it continues to not just grow but also maintain itself because there has been other mass participation events that have come and and fallen off the radar it's really our biggest challenge and opportunity at the same time.

19:10Douglas Gremmen:And I must give credit to Christian Tutsko's been an absolute advocate that the best marketing is to keep investing in the product, right? Make everybody's experience that much better when they come back the next year. It's a big investment in AV. It's a big investment in sound. It's a big investment in the arenas that we're now going to, as you saw in the video as well. So the investment in product to really make this the Champions League of fitness racing has been fundamental in the growth. That said, when we talk about the stickiness in gyms and how do we ensure that gyms are investing into high rock spaces, all of a sudden the infrastructure is there.

19:44Douglas Gremmen:And it's not like gyms are this year investing into a high rock setup and then next year are going to throw that all out and invest in a completely different setup. So that stickiness in the grassroot is extremely important for us. We've got about five minutes left, so we're going to see what questions come from the audience in just a second. But one of the things that you launched leaning into the brand side was high rocks cruises. What was the concept and idea there? I think it was a little bit of a dream from Christian who likes his parties. He likes his travel. But actually, I think more fundamentally is that we've seen a massive increase in wellness travel, right?

20:16I think people are changing the way they travel.

20:19Douglas Gremmen:They're changing the way they choose their hotels. They're changing the way they engage with their friends and their community. So the cruise was a natural extension. It's also a great learning for us that you can't just kind of click a switch and all of a sudden, oh, we've sold 52 ,000 tickets in New York. and all of a sudden the cruise is filled up as well. It's a different price point. It requires different marketing. And that's also a good challenge that not everything can be on autopilot. So I think that's been a good learning for us, but we're very excited to hit that cruise at the end of October.

20:49So you talked about, I think you're, and obviously you guys are intentional about this, talking about yourselves as not a competition, but a sport and you say there's ambitions to be an Olympic sport in the future. Why have you decided to take that approach?

21:01Douglas Gremmen:Pretty much a little bit on the basis of what you spoke to about around the longevity of events. But secondly, also, I think deep down, we truly believe that fitness can be the biggest sport in the world. Like we said, there's already a billion members around the world that are somewhat engaging in the activity that our sport entails, right? So we truly believe that with the low barrier to entry, the infrastructure that's already in place, you can join a gym for 19 pounds a month, or you can join a third space for 250, 300 pounds. Everybody will find a place to practice fitness in the way that we're now seeing it.

21:33All right. Some questions have come in. When was the exact moment you understood that Hyrux was going to be a global phenomenon? And how did you come to that conclusion?

21:42Douglas Gremmen:Well, it's all small moments. It's incremental moments. Post-COVID, Manchester 2022, we had 2 ,000 athletes at the start and we're like, wow, 2 ,000 athletes. That kind of went to 4 ,000 athletes in London. We're like, wow. and then you realize people want to race on a Friday and you're like, people are willing to take a day off for this and then we were like, okay, if people are going to the US Open or the Australian Open as Dominic was talking about earlier, they're willing to give up a Monday to go and watch tennis will they be willing to give up a Monday to go and race High Rocks and the answer is absolutely, so I think when we saw that people were buying tickets on Thursday, Fridays and now Mondays it's kind of that pinch me moment of wow, we can have 52 ,000 people at New York, which is the same amount of numbers as the New York Marathon.

22:28Those numbers are nuts. What is your long-term vision for High Rock's kids and how will you achieve it?

22:33Douglas Gremmen:Look, I think the beauty about building a sport is to be able to service every level of the infrastructure, right? So in the same way that the top funnel of Olympic athletes is important, being able to create that grassroots in schools and universities and being able to bring kids into gyms is an absolutely essential part in establishing ourselves as a global sport. And a question from Robin with such a strong affiliate network driving engagement locally, how are you thinking about building a direct ongoing relationship with participants? We don't want to take the consumer away from the gym, right?