Sports Training Services
Industry Profile Report
Dive Deep into the industry with a 25+ page industry report (pdf format) including the following chapters
Industry Overview Current Conditions, Industry Structure, How Firms Operate, Industry Trends, Credit Underwriting & Risks, and Industry Forecast.
Call Preparation Call Prep Questions, Industry Terms, and Weblinks.
Financial Insights Working Capital, Capital Financing, Business Valuation, and Financial Benchmarks.
Industry Profile Excerpts
Industry Overview
The 16,800 sports training service providers in the US offer instruction in athletic activities The industry includes personal trainers, which operate independently from a sports facility. Firms may specialize in a particular sport or exercise, such as tennis or yoga, or provide general athletic training.
Competition From Alternative Providers
Sports training service providers compete with a variety of alternative sources, including fitness clubs, recreation centers, schools, other types of camps (academic, scouting), and videos (YouTube, DVDs).
Industry size & Structure
The average sports training service provider operates out of a single location, employs 6-7 workers, and generates about $465,000 annually.
- The sports training services industry consists of about 16,800 firms that employ about 115,700 workers and generate $7.8 billion annually.
- The sports training services industry is fragmented; the top 50 companies account for 19% of industry revenue. In the nonprofit sector, the top 50 companies account for 30% of sector revenue.
- Small, independent organizations account for the vast majority of the industry. Large organizations offer services through local chapters.
Industry Forecast
Sports Training Services Industry Growth

Recent Developments
Mar 8, 2023 - Sport, Fitness Activity Participation Increases
- The number of Americans who participated in at least one sport or fitness activity increased for the fifth consecutive year in 2022, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. Participation in group fitness-based activities continued to struggle with some signs of recovery. About 237 million people in the US (77.6% of Americans ages 6 and older) participated in at least one sport or fitness activity in 2022, which is a 9.2% increase from 2017 and a 1.9% increase from 2021.
- Many health club-based activities were not back to 2019 participation rates, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. Of the 24 fitness activities tracked, eight had an increase in participation in the past three years: Pilates training (11.6%); yoga (10.4%); kettlebells (6.5%); dance, step, and other choreographed exercise to music (5%); barre (3.8%); free weights (dumbbells/hand weights) (3.3%); walking for fitness (3%) and free weights (barbells) (1.1%). The gym-based activities with the biggest decreases in participation from 2019 to 2022 were group stationary cycling (-36.9%), cross-training style workouts (-31.7%), boot camp style training (-24%), stair climbing machine (-24%) and cardio kickboxing (-21.3%).
- • Title IX — 1972’s gender-equality law that banned sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational institutions — was a key driver of profound growth and evolution in women's college athletic programs. Sports training services have benefited, as the legislation essentially required school sports programs to offer equal opportunities to women, relative to their male counterparts, and the effect was immediate. The ratio of girls to boys participating in high school sports nationwide rose from 8% in 1971-72 (before the law was passed) to 53% a decade later, according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). The NCAA saw a similar rise (from 18% to 44%) at the college level. Many of the most popular girls’ sports in 2018-19 — the most recent data in the NFHS survey — were ones that made huge initial gains right after Title IX and were already among the most popular by the mid-1970s. For instance, track and field, volleyball and basketball were the top three in 1975-76, and they remain the three most popular sports for girls to play today. Soccer has been one of Title IX’s biggest success stories, with the dramatic increase in girls’ participation directly helping to fuel American women’s dominance on the international stage in subsequent generations. Soccer has gone from a sport with just 700 total female participants in 1971-72 — representing just 0.24% of all American girls who played high school sports — to 394,105 in 2018-19, which ranked fourth among all sports and accounted for 12% of all female high school athletes.
- "Long COVID" may negatively affect demand for sports training as athletes struggle to recover. The definition of long COVID has not yet been set. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, uses the term to refer to people who have an episode of COVID-19 that wasn’t very severe – meaning they weren’t ICU patients – and are left with some deficiencies in their ability to perform their activities of daily life when compared to pre-infection. Long COVID also takes different forms, with a long list of symptoms that overlap with countless other maladies, making it difficult for medical experts to set a care plan. Sports training may be difficult or impossible for an extended period as a result of these issues.
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