Statistics on the Growth of CrossFit

• According to Crossfit, the number of affiliates worldwide hit a new high in July 2019, at 15,200.
•  358,646 people signed up for the 2019 open and 144,276 completed all five workouts at the Rx level. Not only are more people participating in the Open but more people are capable of completing the workouts as prescribed; the world’s fitness just keeps getting better.
• The number of affiliate gyms, up from just 13 in 2005, is 7000.
• There has been a 166% year-over-year growth rate of the CrossFit Games.
• The estimated failure rate of opening a CrossFit gym is 2%.
•  2 billion is the estimated net of just the CrossFit affiliates in 2013.

Interest in CrossFit Over Time

• As can be seen with this screenshot from consumer searches on Google, CrossFit has shown explosive growth while other traditional big brand gyms have remained relatively flat lined.

Opinions on CrossFit's Growth

• CrossFit’s popularity has boomed for certain, but may be coming to an end. The exercise method has some serious drawbacks, and critics are quick to point them out. The primary concern is safety. A video by Tiger Fitness published by the Atlantic calls CrossFit a “recipe for injury.”
• “High-intensity interval training is the result of a lot of these infomercials,” Walter Thompson, author of the American College of Sports Medicine’s Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2015, told NPR. “I think that in five years, we’re not going to be talking about [it].”
• In the last few years, CrossFit’s sentiment on social media has almost completely flipped from around 65% positive and 30% negative in 2010 to 40% positive and 60% negative in 2017.

Questions/Concerns People Have Surrounding Selecting a Fitness Facility

•  Cost is always uppermost in people's minds
• Whether there is a maintenance fee.
• Whether a contract must be signed.
• If there is a cancellation policy.
• Whether the gym has insurance.
• People want to know where the facility is located.
• Potential customers want to see positive reviews.
• Are the staff qualified?
•  Three case studies of website re-designs for fitness facilities can be viewed here. They are for Rise Nation, DTC Crossfit, and Inngi Float. For DTC Crossfit, it was recommended that they provide information on the facility by ensuring prospective, as well as current members, have access to the following information: equipment information, information that highlights amenities, and information surrounding any feature events.

Summary Of Our Early Findings Relevant To The Goals

• Our first hour of research made it plain that Crossfit is very elusive with any kind of growth data released publicly. In fact, we came across many "he said, she said" articles for this section. We provided what we considered the most credible and reliable data for this aspect.
• We also provided some questions, and 3 case studies to answer the part of the ask surrounding hypothetical questions people are asking when they are shopping for a fitness facility to better inform a website redesign.
• Despite our best efforts in the first hour, we could not find anything relevant to data specific to Indianapolis, Indiana, but secondarily, Carmel, Indiana and Zionsville, Indiana. This is too granular for this particular ask, and there is no publicly available data on this, that we could see in the first hour. In fact, a large amount of the time allotted to this research was spent ascertaining this. We are suggesting that we use a United States focus on this.
• Please select one or more of the options provided in the proposed scoping section below.