Gympass sells companies one pass to every gym in its network

Gyms sell memberships that most people underuse, while employees who want flexibility can't justify a single-club contract. Gympass (now Wellhub), founded in 2012 in São Paulo, built a network to match the two.

The model: companies subscribe, and their employees get a pass covering 50,000+ gyms and studios plus partner wellness apps. Gyms join to fill empty slots with zero marketing cost — by 2024 the aggregator had become the market default.

The pandemic almost killed the model when gyms closed; Gympass pivoted to online classes and wellness (meditation, therapy, nutrition), adding 1,000 corporate clients in 2020 to reach 3,000, and grew 10% a month from March 2021.

A $220m SoftBank-led round in 2021 valued it at $2.2bn; it operates in 10 countries, and Brazil's antitrust body capped exclusivity contracts in 2022 so gyms can be on several passes.

Let the employer pay for flexibility

The employer pays, so price sensitivity is corporate, not individual.

Gyms monetize idle capacity at near-zero CAC.

Flexibility beats a fixed club contract for modern employees.

Network effects make each new gym more valuable to every subscriber.

If your product has idle capacity and a reluctant buyer, find a third party who benefits more from its use than the user pays for — the payer and the user don't have to be the same person.

Renamed Wellhub, it bought Germany's Urban Sports Club in 2025 to deepen European coverage, combining 34,500 corporate clients and 83,000 wellness partners; rivals such as TotalPass now copy the aggregation model.