A virtual offering, when branded and experience-designed properly, offers new customers a portal into the in-club experience. After being engaged in an environment they prefer at first (the comfort of their own home) they gravitate to trying the in-club experience (which they expect will be of similar quality) and all the extra social benefits that entails.
Existing members who might be reluctant to return to the club, can be re-activated by digital means first where the channels of communication are open and flowing. Once re-activated it becomes far more straight-forward to motivate their return to the club environments.
The Les Mills report states that digital fitness users exercise 22% more frequently than the live-only exercisers (ie 4.4 times a week vs 3.6).
Fitness On Demand also previously noted that overall group exercise increased by 40% year-on-year when virtual products and services were introduced.
So, on top of that, fitness customers become more active overall when they blend their routines between in-person and at-home, driving overall growth.
Digital is now an established and sizeable part of the market
In the Move member data as of September 2021, digital is not only enduring but proving to be a sizeable proportion of all the market. As the Les Mills report points out again “far from being a simple stop-gap to tide the industry over during the covid pandemic, live stream and on-demand have become vital additions to club’s long term digital offerings.” This absolutely rings true in the Move data.
In London, digital-only routines are still substantially more popular than in-person routines, even now almost six months into reopening.