Blockchain, DAO, NFTs

Fitness Ventures Sport Clubs: Business Plan Summary

Winner of ETHGlobal’s 2022 DAOHacks IPFS Pool Prize

We enable Sports Team and Health Club Memberships, Competitions, and Event Scheduling. We serve the Health, Fitness, and Participatory Sports industries.

This report explores technical and business aspects of the Fitness Ventures platform. Herein, we discuss and analyze:

  1. Current Functionality: Version 0.1.5-alpha
  2. Planned Functionality: Versions 0.2.0 – 0.5.0-alpha
  3. Customer Segmentation & Monetization Strategy
  4. Fitness Industry Market Analysis: Global Sales & Market Segmentation
  5. Additional Uses Cases
  6. References & Additional Market Data

Twelve minute demonstration of the Fitness Ventures MVP, version 0.1.0-alpha (April 2022):


Fitness Ventures is part of a portfolio of programmable and utility NFT projects that Code Sport is spinning out. These projects are multichain dApps which explore novel, but real-world use cases of NFTs.

At Code Sport Labs, our goal is to bring Blockchain to the masses by aggressively focusing on specific industry verticals. Verticals where Blockchain technology reduces business costs while driving increased customer engagement.

1. Current Functionality: Version 0.1.5-alpha

Key Takeaway

NFTs Are More Than Goofy Jpegs.

We see NFTs as tokenized Web Applications. They serve as hybrids which connect the on- and off-chain worlds. This means they are minified programs that consume, generate, and manipulate data.

In short, NFTs serve as tokenized software programs which double as containers of value!

The project’s repo is located at: https://github.com/codesport/fitness-club-dao . The project is running on multiple EVM test nets including Polygon’s Mumbai.

The current version supports:

  1. Fitness club creation (organized as a DAO)
    • Companies, entrepreneurs as well as sports and fitness enthusiasts to launch sports teams and fitness groups organized as ERC-721 (NFT-based) DAOs
  2. Read/Write and Admin Functions: Team administrators may update membership fee, team size, etc. Everyone else may read Team’s metadata and global state variables

  3. NFT-based Membership: Fee-based sign-up of new members to an existing club by means of an NFT minter
    • NFTs and JSON metadata are pinned to IPFS via Pinata
    • Individuals can register and join virtual and real life fitness, workout, and sports teams by purchasing memberships minted as NFTs
  4. Full DAO functionality works! This has been confirmed by Unit Testing in all contracts .
    • Live Unit Testing Output: New YouTube Video Showing Execution of the Governance Unit Testing Script
    • Allows us to keep users on our platform by building our own custom UI for Governance activities
      • Negates the use of 3rd party websites for Governance
    • Bumped dApp version from 0.1.0-alpha to 0.1.5-alpha

2. Planned Functionality: Versions 0.2.0 – 0.5.0-alpha

Key Takeaway

Feature upgrades for Fitness Ventures are being actively built for Code Sport’s Builder’s DAO project. Having a common codebase across our projects will yield exponential productivity gains.

Critical Next Step

Priority One: Deploy v0.1.5-alpha to a live website running atop of an NGINX web server

After the website launch, we intend to upgrade Fitness Venture’s NFTs to Programmable Utility ERC-721 tokens. These features have been successfully built into our Builder’s DAO project. Features of Programmable Utility ERC-721 tokens include:

  • Off-Chain Data Integration: Workout data recorded by FitBit. Scores and times from sporting events
  • Team Prizes: USDC be “embedded” and withdrawn from the NFT
    • Distributing of ad hoc cash rewards or regular income
  • Token Upgrades, Downgrades, and Deactivation: An administrator or the DAO (through governance voting) may either upgrade or strip an NFT of its privileges. This is done by changing the tokenURI to point to another JSON metadata file. An alternative is editing the contents of metadata.json if it’s stored off-chain. Patrick’s and sjuanati’s implementations are typical solid examples
  • Authentication & Access Control: Authenticating users to portions of Fitness Venture’s website via their wallet (e.g., event scheduler)

Other planned features encompass:

  • Migrate front and backend to Next.js
  • Redesign UI/UX using Tailwind CSS
  • Adding Governance UI: Integrating DAO Governance privileges (i.e., proposal submittals and voting) into the platform
  • Including scores and statistics from sporting events (Dynamic NFT)
  • API Integration with activity trackers such as Fitbit (Dynamic NFT)
  • Pre-paying gas fees for individuals minting NFTs (Harmony has a mainnet Faucet which basically eliminates gas fees for users)
  • To overdependence on Piñata, dual-pin data to IPFS with NFT.storage
  • Database Integration: Store in end users’ contact information (e.g., name and email) in a database

3. Customer Segmentation & Monetization Strategy

Key Takeaways

  • Fitness Ventures Monetization: Platform Licensing, In-NFT Advertising, Consulting Services, Resale/Royalty Fees
  • Target Markets (Customers): B2B and B2C companies in the the health, fitness, and participatory sports industries with established and loyal customer bases
  • Benefits to Business Customers:
    1. LTV Boost: Use as Loyalty Program to Increase Lifetime Customer Value
    2. Additional Revenue Streams: Charging clubs and teams a one-time or monthly fee
    3. Service & Product Differentiation: We allow B2B and B2C companies to offer a unique and highly differentiated service to their end-user
    4. Increased Customer Engagement

We envision offering the Fitness Ventures as a Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription to established businesses. These businesses would pay a monthly licensing fee to integrate Fitness Ventures into their apps and websites. Fitness Ventures would also collect a small royalty fee for each NFT minted or sold.


A. Upstream Customers: Health Club Management & Fitness Software Vendors

We plan to market our platform to Health Club Management & Fitness Software Vendors. These are B2B companies. We consider these vendors as upstream customers because they supply software to fitness and health clubs of all sizes. This segment is highly fragmented with over 150 market participants .

Sales Model: We will sell B2B, Upstream Customers multi-seat licenses to our SaaS platform. They will have the option to resell our platform to their fitness and health clubs customers.


B. Downstream Customers: Gyms, Sports Apparel Retailors, Fitness Tracking Vendors

Key Takeaway

We envision B2C companies using the Fitness Ventures platform to increase customer engagement and generate new revenue streams.

In addition to club management software integration, we envision marketing our platform directly to downstream businesses. Downstream businesses follow a direct to consumer (i.e., B2C) sales model. These include gyms, fitness trackers, and sports apparel retailers. We envision B2C companies using the Fitness Ventures platform to increase customer engagement and generate new revenue streams.

Sales Model: We will sell B2B, Downstream Customers single-seat licenses to our SaaS platform. They will use our SaaS platform to create Blockchain based membership, loyalty, and rewards programs.

Below is a representative list of potential customers:

  1. Equipment & Electronics: Fitness Trackers & Wearables
  2. Gyms & Fitness Centers
  3. Global Sports Apparel Brands
    4. The global sports apparel market generated about USD $193 billion in revenue in 2021. Rising revenues are forecast to continue and estimated to reach around USD $270 billion in 2028.
    — Statista
    • Lululemon
    • Nike
    • Puma SE, Inc (Herzogenaurach, Germany)
    • Umbro Ltd (Manchester, United Kingdom)
    • Adidas AG (Herzogenaurach, Germany)
    • Nike, Inc (Beaverton, Oregon, United States)
    • Columbia Sportswear Company (Portland, Oregon, United States)
    • Under Armour, Inc (Baltimore, Maryland, United States)
    • Anta Sports Products Limited (Xiamen, China)
    • Lululemon Athletica Inc (Vancouver, Canada)
    • Fila Holdings Corp (Seoul, South Korea)
    • Li Ning Company Limited (Beijing, China)

  4. Outdoor and Team-based Sports Startups

    5. Unlike many digital communities that gained traction over the last few years, [the below] platforms use the internet to unite people offline.

    — Fitt Insider Issue 199
    • Street FC: USD $2.2MM total funding

      Aiming to build the planet’s biggest {Soccer] club, Street FC hosts flashmob-like pick-up soccer games.

      Bringing a street basketball format to soccer, the company organizes 5v5 games on underutilized concrete spaces. Then, gamifying participation beyond the court, player profiles track streaks and peer ratings while members connect on Discord.

      — Fitt Insider Issue 199
    • Crosscourt
      …a basketball-focused lifestyle club. [As] a highly curated tech-enabled platform, [Crosscourt] hosts pick-up games at its LA gym — complete with locker rooms, jerseys, and officials. Expanding its footprint, club format, and sports offering, Crosscourt is eyeing expansion. — Fitt Insider Issue 199
    • Swish House

      …basketball-based fitness classes and pick-up games at locations in NYC, Chicago, and Michigan

      — Fitt Insider Issue 199
    • Racket-centric Sports Start-ups

4. Fitness Industry Market Analysis: Global Sales & Market Segmentation

Key Takeaway

In 2021, the fitness industry’s global revenues were approximately USD $475.66 billion. Sports Apparel accounted for over 40% of those revenues.

Including revenues from high-end participatory sports venues (e.g., golf country clubs, yacht clubs, and skiing facilities) adds USD $136.62 billion to this figure. Thus increasing the 2021 market size to USD $612.28 billion.

The industry may be carved into the following 7 global market segments:

  1. Sports Apparel (Global Revenues of USD $193 billion in 2021)1: Fitness related clothing and footwear
  2. Participatory Sports (ex-fitness centers) (USD $136.62 billion in 2021)4: Golf courses and country clubs, skiing facilities, yacht clubs and marinas as well as bowling centers. Comprises sales from membership fees, services, and merchandise
  3. Fitness Centers (USD $91.3 billion in 2021)2: Gyms, health clubs, and boutique fitness studios
  4. Bicycles (USD $78.33 billion in 2021)5: Conventional and electric bicycles (eBikes). This is a highly fragmented market with a 2022-2029 CAGR estimated at 6.5%. The largest player is Taiwan-based Giant Bicycles (Giant Manufacturing Co, Ltd.) with USD $2.26 billion in 2021 sales (2.9% market share)
  5. Equipment & Electronics (in excess of USD $53.2 billion)2: Fitness equipment USD $11.3B + fitness trackers/wearables USD $41.9B
  6. Sports Nutrition (USD $44.43 billion in 2021)3: Nutritional supplements and processed foods (e.g., protein bars, protein powders, and sports drinks). Estimated CAGR of 7.57% from 2022 to 2030
  7. Software (ex-club management & scheduling) (in excess of USD $15.4 billion in 2021)2: Online/digital fitness USD $10.7B (+33.10% CAGR 2021-2028) + fitness apps USD $4.7B (+23.5% CAGR 2021-2028)

The sales estimates below exclude those from Sports Apparel retailers such as Lululemon and Nike as well as sales from Sports Nutrition providers, and bicycle manufacturers.

Fitness Industry Revenue by Segment from 2019 - 2021

Figure 1: Pandemic Era Fitness Industry Revenues by Segment: 2019 – 2021 (USD billions)2
Fitness Industry Revenue by Segment 2019 - 2028

Figure 2: Fitness Industry Revenue by Segment 2019 – 20282

5. Additional Uses Cases

The Fitness Ventures dApp is easily customized to satisfy multiple use cases across a variety of industries. It may be used to mint NFT-based certifications and memberships. To illustrate:

  • Diplomas & Certifications:
    • A community college or even an online certification program may mint diplomas and certificates of completion as NFTs in addition to paper-based wall plaques
    • A martial arts academy may award black belt certifications as NFTs
  • Meetups & Affinity Groups:
    • Groups on Meetup, Facebook, Eventbrite may monetize their userbases by offering membership tokens through NFTs

6. References and Additional Market Data

  1. Statista
  2. RunRepeat
  3. Precedence Research. Their data has been graphed on Statista
  4. Research and Markets (The Business Research Company)
  5. Fortune Business Insights

Research Notes and Additional Market Data

NB-1: 2021 health club and scheduling software revenues (i.e., Mindbody, ClassPass, GloFox, Vagaro, ABC Fitness) which totaled USD $0.7 billion were excluded from this market size analysis.

NB-2: 2021 Bicycle industry market size estimates vary. Fortune Business Insights pegs 2021 market size at USD $78.33 billion. However, GrandViewResearch, puts 2021 global bicycle sales at USD $59.33 billion.

In line with a growing trend since the 1990s, OEMs are using a dual strategy of in-house brand positioning and just-in-time manufacturing. In industry terms this is called vertical supply chain integration. In addition to a brand strategy, these companies run direct-to-consumer ecommerce sites. However, many also leverage selling on Amazon due to its global customer footprint.

NB-3:Grandview pegs 2021 Sports Nutrition industry revenues at a lower $40 billion. However, we’ve adhered to Precedence Research’s USD $44.43 billion because it’s more widely cited within the industry.

NB-4: RunRepeat’s calculations for 2021 industry revenues of USD $159.9 billion as well as their 2028 growth rate projection of 171.75% exclude Sports Apparel and Sports Nutrition revenues. However, Statista estimates 2028 global revenues from sports apparel sales will be USD $270 billion. A 40% increase from 2021 levels.

NB-5: The Participatory Sports Market inherently includes Fitness Centers (Gyms and Health Clubs). However, for purposes of our market segmentation we extracted Fitness Centers as a separate category

Fortune Business Insights: Global Sports Apparel Market Research

Grand View Research: Fitness App Market Research

Breaking Up With Peloton: NY Times article highlighting shift from working out at home to the resurgence in gym and health club memberships.

Growjo: Revenue stats for privately held companies

GetLatka: Another Provider of revenue data on SaaS companies

Policy Advice: A one-off blog-post on fitness club usage and revenue stats

Wellness Creative: Includes stats on largest gyms and fitness clubs by revenue. Expand the accordion below to view their top 10.

Fastest-Growing Sports Nutrition Brands: from Similar Web’s Ecommerce Intelligence Group

Google SERP: participatory sports market size in 2021

  1. LA Fitness – USD $2.09 billion
  2. Life Time Fitness – $1.75 billion
  3. 24 Hour Fitness – $1.51 billion
  4. Anytime Fitness – $1.73 billion
  5. Equinox – $1.43 billion
  6. ClubCorp – $1.11 billion
  7. Virgin Active – $760m
  8. Konami Sports & Fitness – $609m
  9. Planet Fitness – $527.9m
  10. Central Sports – $489m