Back in September, Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fürste had a clear message for the company’s community of fitness racers: “You’re not getting rid of us anytime soon.”
Reports that Swiss sports marketing agency Infront Sports & Media planned to sell its majority holding in Hyrox had led to widespread speculation that Fürste and his co-founder Christian Toetzke might also be exiting the business. However, in an Instagram video fittingly filmed against
the backdrop of a working gym, the pair appeared all smiles as they directly addressed their followers to announce that they were not going anywhere.
Instead, Fürste and Toetzke confirmed that they were partnering with a powerful consortium led by consumer-focused private equity firm L Catterton to buy back control of Hyrox. The blockbuster transaction reportedly valued the nine-year-old mass participation fitness phenomenon at a staggering €600 million, or approximately US$700 million.
Infront had initially invested in the rapidly expanding fitness concept back in 2019 before subsequently acquiring a majority shareholding in 2022. Even under Infront’s majority ownership, the original deal had stipulated that the core Hyrox founding team would retain the majority of the direction and control over day-to-day commercial decisions. Even so, Fürste describes regaining a formal controlling stake as a profoundly important milestone for the enterprise.
Reflecting on the transaction during an exclusive interview at the SportAccord Forum in Lausanne, Fürste explained how the opportunity materialized. "I think opportunities arise at times," he noted, "and there was the opportunity to get back into the majority shareholding of Hyrox, which we always wanted."
He added that while they did not necessarily want to sell the business back in 2022, a variety of changing circumstances led to that outcome. "We always said that we would like to regain majority," Fürste continued. "We were calling the shots to the most extent before, and we also have had a good relationship with our former investor Infront Sports & Media. But of course, being in the driver’s seat officially is also an important aspect for founders."
‘We will see Hyrox on TVs everywhere’
Announcing the landmark agreement at the time, Fürste emphasized that the fresh capital injection represented a pivotal next step in the rapid and ongoing evolution of the Hyrox success story.
According to the official announcement, the company hopes to heavily leverage the extensive experience of LVMH-backed L Catterton, a firm renowned for scaling high-growth consumer and fitness businesses. L Catterton’s impressive portfolio includes household names such as sandal maker Birkenstock, connected fitness specialist Peloton, and French fashion label APC. Such associations strongly suggest that the private equity firm views Hyrox just as much as a lifestyle brand as it does a competitive fitness race.
Indeed, ever since launching its first event in 2017, Hyrox has earned a formidable reputation as one of the world’s fastest-growing mass participation sports. It has successfully cultivated a deeply loyal community of fitness enthusiasts who routinely travel across the globe just to participate in its signature events. Typically hosted inside massive indoor convention centers or sports arenas, a standard Hyrox race comprises eight grueling 1 kilometer runs, with each running segment immediately followed by a punishing functional workout station, such as sled pushes, sled pulls, burpee broad jumps, or sandbag lunges.
Designed specifically to give everyday gym-goers a tangible goal and event to train for, Hyrox has scaled at an astonishing pace. The organization expects to host approximately 2.5 million participants alongside 2.89 million spectators across roughly 135 separate events during its 2026/27 season, according to projections shared by Fürste.
With a workforce exceeding 600 employees distributed across offices in Germany, the UK, and the United States, the company has scaled aggressively. It currently stages races in more than 35 countries globally, with many events taking place simultaneously on different continents during the same weekend, spanning major markets like Australia, Brazil, China, France, India, and Japan.
That meteoric trajectory offers a clear window into why Hyrox continues to attract premier global investors. Yet, its breathless growth has occasionally been difficult to keep pace with—sometimes even for the organization itself. Fürste readily admits that the expansion journey has been "super intense." Consequently, he notes that the company’s immediate priority is not necessarily pushing aggressively into fresh markets, but rather focusing heavily on building the robust internal structures required to sustain long-term expansion while guaranteeing consistent event quality across every international stop.
The company’s new investors are also expected to bring substantial strategic value to the table. Fürste explains that their involvement will be strategic in nature, while firmly stressing that the founding team will continue driving the business and making the ultimate decisions.
Another key member of the newly formed investor group is WndrCo, the prominent investment firm co-founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg—the former Walt Disney Studios chairman and DreamWorks founder—alongside former Dropbox chief financial officer Sujay Jaswa. When discussing their involvement, Fürste remarked that he does not really need to explain the immense media and digital expertise they bring as Hyrox looks to meaningfully grow its broader media footprint.
Up to this point in the company’s history, media rights have accounted for a remarkably small share of overall revenue. Roughly 60 percent of the business’s revenue stems directly from participation fees and spectator ticket sales. While marquee events are regularly streamed live on the official Hyrox YouTube channel, the company has also worked to expand its ambient reach; a partnership struck last year with Atmosphere TV sees all Hyrox Majors and Regional Championships broadcast across more than 60,000 bars, restaurants, gyms, and retail venues around the world.
Traditional broadcast rights deals, however, have historically been few and far between. While immediate revenue growth from traditional media rights is not strictly factored into their current financial business model, Fürste insists it will become an important part of the next stage of development. He points to improving the production quality of live races and other supporting entertainment formats as the next big operational step.
Fürste firmly believes that Hyrox is fundamentally easier to broadcast than traditional endurance sports like marathons or triathlons because the entire competition takes place within a condensed, enclosed arena space. However, he acknowledges that the core challenge moving forward lies in "making it sexy so that people actually want to watch it."
There is already clear evidence of domestic demand. In Germany, where Hyrox held its inaugural event back in 2017, the company successfully secured a broadcast agreement with Axel Springer-owned media outlet Bild. Bild aired live coverage of the season-opener in Hamburg at the end of October and is set to broadcast the remainder of the 2026/27 Elite Series.
If Fürste has his way, that German partnership will only be the beginning.
"That development will be immense and we will see great development on the live broadcasting of Hyrox races," he says. "I think it’s super exciting to watch. Obviously I’ve watched quite a few, and the production level has gone up quite consistently, and hopefully also with our new investors, we will invest a lot more into that space as well. And I’m pretty sure we will see Hyrox races on TVs everywhere in the world over the next 18 months."
Wider media coverage could simultaneously bolster the sponsorship proposition for Hyrox. Even without major broadcast partnerships in place up to now, the organization has successfully landed lucrative global and regional commercial deals with major brands such as Puma, Amazon, and Intersport.
"I think media is obviously a new anchor for that," Fürste says, explaining the commercial feedback loop. "And the world still works like that—if you have the reach on those channels, it’s much easier to engage with partners, or at least get better contracts or upgrade those contracts. So that’s why media was always a super important point."
He adds, "But I think the core of it all is still our community and the events itself. You have direct touch points with four, five million people, including spectators on site, which is a super big value for a lot of partners. Because instead of sponsoring maybe one marathon in a city in a year, you can activate six times a year on six Hyrox events."
Pursuing ‘the ultimate goal’
Precisely what Hyrox’s future media distribution mix will ultimately look like remains to be finalized, but one strategic objective remains crystal clear: the brand harbors deep ambitions to become a part of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. While the company has made no secret of its long-term aspirations to secure Olympic inclusion, it has taken concrete, operational steps over the past twelve months. Most notably, this includes a recently announced strategic partnership that formally establishes "Hybrid Racing" as a recognized discipline within World Triathlon.
The global governing body had already approved the unique Hyrox competition format at its Congress held in Wollongong last October. However, the formalization of the agreement paves the way for official world, continental, and national championships dedicated strictly to hybrid racing.
For any sport to be considered eligible for Olympic inclusion, it must be governed by a recognized international sports federation. Partnering with World Triathlon represents the most efficient and practical route to the Games for Hyrox, which otherwise would have faced the daunting, lengthy process of establishing its own independent international governing federation entirely from scratch.
"We didn’t see any merit in creating our own federation at that point," explains Fürste. "We were looking around and triathlon in the end is a multi-sport federation. They also combine three sports that existed before and created a race out of that. We did kind of a similar thing, just with eight workouts and running, and also we had some connections to World Triathlon from our former lives. So it was the first federation we approached."
He continues, "There were a lot of similarities where we aligned, and for me, it’s an important next step because if you want to create a real ecosystem that you call a sport, then you need that professional setup."
Because the competition schedule and sports program for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games have already been finalized, the Brisbane 2032 Games represent the earliest possible window for hybrid racing to make its Olympic debut. The International Olympic Committee plans to confirm the final sports program for Brisbane during the upcoming 147th IOC Session. Candidate disciplines will learn whether they advance to the critical "combined comparison phase," where the suitability of both existing and proposed new sports is thoroughly evaluated.
Hyrox has certainly not struggled to capture public attention since bursting onto the sports scene nearly a decade ago. However, as a three-time Olympic medalist who claimed field hockey gold for Germany at the Beijing and London Olympic Games, Fürste understands intimately what the Olympic stage can do for a sport’s global profile. With countless sporting disciplines actively vying for a limited number of slots on the program, he maintains a pragmatic and philosophical outlook on the selection process.
"Any sport, that’s the ultimate goal: to be part of the Olympics," Fürste reflects. "It’s the recognition, it’s the athletes that get the opportunity to experience the greatest event in the world. So all of that together is reason enough to have that as a goal."
"I would love for our athletes to have the chance to experience what I was able to experience. And of course, for me, it would be a full circle moment to create something that gets integrated after being part of that for such a long time. This is goal setting, and if in the end you don’t reach your goals, then you have to find a new one. We’re now pursuing this as much as we can. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out, and we need to do something else."
