Daniel Wischer & Erwin Korst - Why Most AI Initiatives Fail: Sport Alliance on Being Data Ready vs. Data Aware

Hey friends, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness and wellness industry podcast for over five years and running. I'm your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the honor of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. If you like the show, we'd love it if you took three minutes of your day to leave us a nice supporter review wherever you consume your podcast. If you're interested in staying up to date with the future of fitness, go to future of fitness.co to subscribe and get weekly summaries dropped into your inbox. Now onto the show. Now, I've seen this movie before, but here's the difference. They've opened up a U.S. headquarters in Boston because they understand that the American market deserves dedicated, localized support. After digging into the platform, one benefit especially stood out. They are simplifying the nightmare that keeps business owners up at night migrations. These guys were able to migrate one mega client with more than 250 locations in six different countries in just 20 days between two payment runs, no disrupting operations, no member loss, one seamless operation that simply works. Now, if you have ever switched platforms, you know how terrifying that process can be and how truly impressive that feat is. At a high level, here's their secret sauce. They give the power back to the operator. Instead of forcing you into their closed ecosystem, their Perfect Gym Marketplace connects with over 120 integration partners. So want to use your own app, your preferred payment processor, class pass for booking? No problem. Whether you're running a single studio or managing a multi-location enterprise, Perfect Gym was built from the ground up for multi-club operations. They've invested a ton into this platform, and now they're bringing that European engineering excellence to America. The migration experts have arrived. Check out perfectgym.com where enterprise level sophistication meets operator freedom. Hey friends, if you are serious about the business of fitness, please block off February 2026 for the Connected Health and Fitness Summit in Los Angeles. This is where operators, founders, and health tech leaders go to get a grip on what's next. AI integration, wearable tech that drives retention, GLP1 market impact, longevity strategies, and so much more. All the stuff that is reshaping our industry right now. Three days of real conversations with people building this space, not just talking about it. You'll leave with partnerships and playbooks you can actually use. My listeners get 10% off with the code FOF10. Link in the show notes. I hope to see you there. All right. Let's go. Daniel Erwin, welcome to the future of fitness, my friends. How are you doing? Very good, very good.

Actually, we are at the moment in uh a very cold uh Boston.

Yeah, with the uh the new headquarters, right? And you guys are just telling me it's uh somewhere around 15 degrees Fahrenheit, which in Celsius sounds much nastier, but they're both just frickin' cold, right? That's just cold. And the only thing that warming up Boston right now is the fact that the New England Patriots are in the divisional round of the playoffs. So uh that poor town has not had good football luck over the last five years since Tom Brady left. But yeah, it's uh it's great to have you guys. So, first and foremost, let's start with this. Uh, you guys are the presenting sponsor for for 2026 of this podcast, and I just wanted to extend my gratitude. Really excited to work with you guys this year. There's a lot of uh really cool content work that we're gonna do together. And I genuinely believe in what you're doing. So uh thank you for being the sponsor this year. It means a lot. And uh yeah, so just want to throw that out there and then we can start moving on to some of the big stuff. So for today's conversation, we're gonna talk about data. And data is at least on this podcast or the conversations that I have is is on top of mind for a lot of people because AI is everywhere. And for AI to work effectively and give the results that we're all hoping for, you need good data, right? It needs to be organized, it needs to be clean because you throw you know shit in, you get shit out. So we're gonna talk about that, what it means to be data ready. But first and foremost, let's just get a little bit of introduction. So, Daniel and Erwin to who you are and um your backgrounds. And uh, Daniel, if you don't mind, why don't you why don't you kick it off?

Yeah, yeah, sure. So so I am Daniel, I'm the technical guy here in this round. So I've I'm a computer science guy by by design and by trade. I've been working in IT projects over the last 17 years in multiple industries. And 12 years ago, we basically uh took over the legacy software magic line in Europe, uh, where we started building the technical foundation for what we see or what we're talking about today. And I've been the CPO for the last uh nine and a half years of that journey. I'm leading the product team and actually building the platform it all runs on. And after nine and a half years, I decided for myself that I needed something new, but I loved Sport Alliance way too much to leave the company. So I'm now in between technology, sales, and customer success and being the binding grid and figuring out how we can leverage the software in the industry to really make the most for our for our operators and to really bring the industry forward. I'm loving this job talking to so many people around the world about that topic. So I'm really looking forward to this episode here and just share a little about what we think about uh data out there. Yeah, right on.

Erwin, how about you, sir?

Yes. Um yeah, actually it started in the early 90s already. And I think uh for most listeners, uh started as a tennis teacher, personal coach, but then uh I really quickly find out that uh sales and networking and connecting with people was more my strongest point. And uh so through my career I I worked always as sales director for all the big operators in uh Europe. I had a great time uh with Les Mills, I even had my own boutique gym, but slowly I came in everything related to uh software and uh tech. Now, more than two years with uh Sport Alliance, uh as Daniel mentioned, he's the tech guy, I'm the sales guy. Combined, we are known as a dynamic duo for let's say uh the US people the last two years we walked around on different events, so where everybody knows us in Europe, you start actually from zero in the US, and that's why we're very excited, uh Eric, uh, to work with you to give us the platform to share with enthusiasm what we can do and how we can US operators in the same way we help European operators, and being a market leader in Europe doesn't mean that directly from start you're successful in the US. So glad that this is a great platform to share our story.

Yeah, right on you guys. And uh I I've seen this story kind of play out a number of times as you know, someone from Europe or outside of the states comes into the market. Sometimes it falls flat, sometimes it doesn't. But what I've noticed about you too, especially is that I've seen you walking around the conferences and I see you talking to people, and I've known that you're you're you're going about this very strategically and methodically to make sure that you get it right. Because it's a big deal. The US market's tremendously large, right? I'm sure that'll come up in today's conversation. So um, you know, as as we get down the road in this conversation, I I want to also know like why what are the opportunities that you see in the US specifically, what what gives you confidence? But um, before we do that, let's talk about the problem, right? Uh, of of what is going on with data and maybe some things that operators are feeling, but mainly maybe they're not acutely aware of why they're feeling it or what the problems are. So yeah, what does it mean to be data ready versus data aware?

Yeah. So if you look at the industry at the moment and over the last year, on every event I've been, AI was the headline of the event. So everybody is talking about AI. AI is the thing you need to succeed in your business, and it's it's it's just all around us, right? But if you if you look at the real, the real world scenario on AI, most of those initiatives actually fail throughout the execution. And there's there's it needs to be the understanding that if you want to have some kind of a setup where you can leverage your data and use AI on top of your data, you first need to have some kind of an infrastructure in place that is actually ready to be executed. So if the data is distributed in multiple databases, scattered through third-party applications you have in your ecosystem, how should you leverage AI to really service your members if the member data is actually scattered? And I think that's the problem that that is not really top of mind for operators because it's very deep down in the in the machine room of the technology. But I see the industry shift. So I don't know, six, seven years ago, none of those operators had a CTO or a CIO in place, right? And you see that shifting in those in those bigger operators, at least in the enterprise operator segment, that those operators now have a CTO in place. Still, the membership management system that is actually your underlying infrastructure is uh the last thing you're going to change. First, you start building a couple of things around it to just try to heal the problem. And then you just end up in a situation where you just have some kind of that structure uh scattered approach on how your infrastructure looks like. And then, and you you will be wondering what I have seen in the last couple of eight years in how infrastructure looks like in fitness operators. But I think this is something we need to need to talk about if AI is picking up as we all expect it to be. How can this industry be really ready to leverage all the benefits that are coming from AI along the way? And also how you can improve your business, earn more money, et cetera, et cetera, if you have your data in place. And it's not just somewhere you expect it to be, and it's then not there when you need it.

Can you maybe give me some examples of that? You know, as an operator or uh, you know, an enterprise, like what types of data are we talking about? Obviously, there's what comes out of your member management, right? You're gonna have all your basics of age and location and you know uh how how frequent they come to the gym, how all that stuff. But there's there's a lot of different data sources. So what what are some of the common ones or what's kind of a concrete use case for this?

Yeah, I can give you, I just give you two examples, right? First thing is so if you if you want to improve how how your members pay and how you actually get the revenue in from the membership management system, how is it if you have your member data not combined with the payment data they are actually having? So you need to have that single source and that single view on a member inside your ecosystem with all the payment data, all the chargebacks, all the reasons, all the additional payments, maybe online purchases he's doing in your web shop or buying additional day tickets or buying additional stuff on your front desk. All of this data needs to be combined. Only then can you leverage tools on top of that to make recommendations to your members, upsell them, cross-sell them in the ecosystem. And there's where it's getting harder and harder if you have some kind of a more fragmented approach. And then a very easy one to grasp is um there's those uh body measurement scales you see in most of the gyms, right? You step on it, you do your measurement, it lands in the app of the body measurement manufacturer, and then the member has to look in this app to find his body measurement, and then he's looking at a different app and looking at his workout data. And then you as an operator want to make a recommendation how that member actually should work out to be successful. But how do you do that if that if that data is not combined? So you need to have a situation where data flows back into the single source of truth, and we are running, and we are not, but the operators are running a member focused business. So the data should be distributed around the member because then they can serve their member better and be more successful in their business because it's a member business, right? And so this is how we see that, and that's that were some of the strategic steps we did in the past to actually get to a point to hopefully have now exactly that in place to help operators get to that.

What is like a question for you, or when since you were an operator, but do you think operators feel this problem yet, or is it something that they're just at this point, they have a million other things they need to focus on, so it's hard for them to think strategically about five years down the road and how their data needs to line up, or is this something that is actually becoming a problem right now?

Yeah, very funny enough. Uh, when I talk with operators, uh sometimes I take the example of the boiled frog syndrome. Oh yeah. I don't know if you know that one, Eric. I use it all the time. Yep. Great example. So for all the people who listen and you don't know, just Google Boiled Frog Syndrome. So they adapt and adapt and adapt and adapt to the current situation, what is not, let's say, feasible for the future. And that can be have have many reasons, of course. If an operator is focusing on grows and MA, then the last thing they want to do is switching in the system. Um or yeah, if if they are very stable and they don't grow anymore, then yeah, they build everything around it, and then there is no need to change. So I think that the the most important job on my side is always let's say give them insights in their current situation, and then guide them to what a desired situation could look like. And what I learned in in the last 30 years is that the most operators look for the solution very close by. As an example, French operators take a French system and German operators take a German system and Spanish Spanish system. So lots of US operators use, of course, a US software system. Of course, we we as a sport alliance group not the only one who can work cross-border. We have uh fantastic uh colleagues uh in this uh space. Uh but I think it's time for for the US to see real use cases, real great use cases, what's going on in Europe and in other countries around uh the world. Um and I think that one of the benefits is that we pretty young company, as uh Daniel already mentioned. The platform is is maximum 10 years old, completely built from scratch in the cloud, and that has of course a lot of uh advantage than companies who are already 30, 20, 30 years on the market. But uh that's more, let's say, to Daniel to explain the difference between a newly built platform versus a very old platform.

Maybe one addition, Eric, is beside the boiled frock and you don't recognize that you are actually need to do something, is if you even if you come to that point that you need that you recognize you need to do something, is then you're still afraid of the migration itself. Right? So changing a membership management system is is by design not the most funniest part you can have. It's awful. It's terrible. But as you said, right, it's been by by the experience most operators had, it's it has always been an awful process by the time so I've been part now of roughly 8,000 club migrations in that in that 12-year time. And we have put a lot of infrastructure in place to make that at least less painful. I don't say it's fun, it's um but it's getting we're getting to a point where you don't have to be extremely afraid that this is going to disrupt your business for the next couple of years, right? And I think that's that's also something we need to talk about maybe later is how to overcome that extreme fear of rather stick with something I know is bad for the future than at least finding the opportunity to move on and get to a better place at the end of the tunnel.

Yeah. And I I think also, Eric, uh in addition to what Daniel is saying, uh Daniel himself and the company is so rich of migrating experience. The main reason is that also we in the past did MAs and we took over German international software companies. But the philosophy is always migrate to one single source of truth, migrating to one platform philosophy. And that strategy of having one platform has a lot of uh advantage. And I think if we look now to the US, then most of the companies also were MA driven and still stuck with many platforms, they still have to maintain. And then it's not only maintaining on let's say a marketing perspective, uh, you have to have different logos, different marketing strategies, maybe more boutique driven or gym-driven or leisure-driven. Uh, but it's also from a tech perspective. Uh it has a lot of disadvantage to have multiple platforms. And so I think one of the strongest points we bring to the US is working with a company with a single platform approach. And yeah, that's why we have so much uh migration experience because we force ourselves after each MA to migrate it to that single source of truth.

Yeah. Yeah, I want to uh go into what that means exactly, but from the platform perspective. One of the things I want to ask you before we move on to that is like with migrations, like what are the biggest pain points that feel people feel most of the time? Like if they're migrating to another platform other than yours, like what what do you hear are the fears for the most part?

So what what I would say is um main driver is data loss. So how do I how do I capture all my historical data in the new system? And will I lose data? The other thing is how do I train my people? Right? So I have a system, it's working, maybe it's not perfect, but I have like maybe I have 5,000 uh front desk staff in my organization. How do I train them? How do I make them aware of a new system? How do I roll that out? So that's that that's that's mostly what you get when when you talk to operators is I have no clue how I can manage that project with my existing resources. Yeah, interesting.

And it's a thing now in the market, uh Eric. There's a new ward, what we call data hosting. So uh if an operator decides to leave one software company for the other software company, is there enough respect on both sides to guide and help the operator in this process? Or is in this case the software company will lose the client busy with data hosting and keep it very difficult to migrate? And uh I think that this is a very interesting topic, uh not for now, but definitely for a future uh podcast uh because yeah, it's it's all in the game and and uh it's very interesting to see how that runs out in the next future.

Yeah, it's it's a very human thing when it comes down to it, right? It's like, well, if you lose a client and you're like, well, screw that, why would I help them migrate to a new one, right? To a new platform. And uh, you know, it's not professional, it's not bright, but it's it's human. Ultimately we still deal with a lot of humans, right?

But if you look at that, so the industry is small and it's a very networking body industry, so everybody knows everyone. We have the philosophy that the data is owned by the operator, and if you want to leave, which may occur in very small amounts, we are supporting, right? Because maybe they come back, maybe the other side is not as green as they thought. So it's always good to at least even in the in it's like a divorce, right? You don't want to have a war on your divorce. You want to have a clear cut with every everyone can move on. And that I think that's the best strategy from our side at least, to not throw wood between legs to just uh let them fall in the process.

Before we get into how you guys do all this, right, from the open platform perspective and a lot of the the features and benefits that you guys have, maybe paint me a picture. Let's cause it's 2026, right? So let's say barely 2026, it's just January. So maybe say like by 2030, with the vision that you guys have, maybe you could just paint me a picture of if you are data ready, what are the capabilities for an operator in five years' time? Like how can AI drive? Like, I'm sure you know, we don't know what's going to happen in the next year, but we kind of have some thoughts maybe um of what could happen in five. I don't know. We we could record this and then you know, 30 days later, something black. Blockbuster comes out and changes everything. But like, yeah, like where where do you think this is all heading in five years? How can the operator leverage data and AI and all these things to create a very unique and powerful experience that helps them make money and save time and do all the things that operators want to do? And you want to go or should I?

The honor is on you.

You guys are very respectful of each other. I appreciate that.

We've been uh traveling so much in the last uh two years that we know each other uh side by side.

But but maybe Daniel, that that's a good point because uh Eric, you say from 2026, it starts now. We started in 2024 already in the US. The only difference is we went what we call under the radar. So uh we did a lot of investigation, we we spent a lot of dollars traveling, talking with clients, talking with let's say our partners, because we have a huge ecosystem, what we call marketplace with more than 150 integration partners. And yeah, you can say, okay, if if we are integrated with with let's say eGim in Europe, that's the same as in the US. So we talked with a lot of partners as well in the US. How should we behave in the US? What can we say? What can't we say? What should we do? Who are the players? Uh and our product is a perfect fit for operators, or we always say at least 10 locations, and you benefit more because in the core it's built for multi-club operations. Um and yeah, likely we we focus uh let's say what we call an enterprise, what we normally call 50 clubs and more, and mid-market between 10 and 50. So that's the both target groups. And I see very specific two things in the next years to 2030. I believe that each operator who didn't switch in the last five years will switch in the next five years. Nonstop. Each operator will have a tech team in place. So even if it's uh an operator of ten locations or fifty or ten, the most big ones already have it. But uh the focus on tech, focus on building your own ecosystem, that's definitely uh the goal of each operator, and each operator will uh switch. And one of the most sentence I use to operators is Danny and I, we would give the power back to the operator. We don't sell a software system, no, we help them to get the power back, to get control in their ecosystem. If we provide a fantastic backend and they choose their own app and their own website, and they have maybe some choices in a in a PSP approach, or they want to work with another app, it's all fine. So I think in the future operators want to have more control in the front, more control to their towards the members, at least own the data, and having good reporting on what's uh going on. And if AI can help it, that that's perfect. But uh there are more ways than uh AI or so yeah, I'm I'm hearing like good reporting.

I I presume, you know, uh improved retention due to I don't know, um forecasting of cancellations, things like that. Any other like aspects of your platform plus good data plus AI that you think are going to be game changing over the next, yeah, like the let's stick with the 2030 time period.

Maybe just to get back to your to your question before on how what 2030 looked like. I don't know that even that we can actually imagine what 2030 will look like. Even the improvements in technology, we're using a lot of agentic development in our own RD department. So I've been watching close by how the improvement of efficiency and building things actually scale up. It's insane. And even three months are just a leap ahead from now. What I what I think will happen is if you have the infrastructure in place, most likely all of your staff can focus on your members and not focus on technology anymore. It's gonna be that's that's gonna be an autopilot topic. And so if you look if you look at marketing, if you look at retention nudging and all of those topics, this is nothing somebody will do in the platform itself. That's my prediction. It's just going to be it's just happening based on data, based on the forecasting models you then have in place. And if you so we are training our models on an extremely large data set, is you can really move things forward with those topics. And I think that we can't even imagine to a degree what 2030 looks like. But my prediction is members, it's all the staff will just be purely member focused, and you just need to have AI in place to run the exhausting stuff you are now doing manually.

Yeah, it is uh it's hard to predict right now, right? I mean, who knows? In 2030, we could be talking about universal basic income by that point, or not.

Things may not change at all. I like it's it's but I just read it, it's like from OpenAI, and that so they basically had um a Chrome browser built by only AI. They just wrote the requirements what they want. And AI built in one week of nonstop coding, three million lines of code and a working browser without a human interacting in between. This just gives you a feel of what is actually possible. And so we are in the fitness industry, and even we, as some kind of one of the technology companies, we are scratching the surface of what is actually possible. But but still we we are scratching the surface because we are not ready to go deeper, because there's an underlying, more underlying problem in the overall setup. And the underlying problem being data readiness? It's it's data readiness, it's technological infrastructure. At least we're getting better, right? If I remember six years ago, people were proud that their that the database was running in a computer underneath their desk. And it was like, yeah, are you are you insane? What is happening? So we are moving forward, but it's but if you look at the speed of AI, we are moving too slow to keep up the pace.

And when you say we, are you talking about us as an industry or uh yeah?

I I'm sorry so yes. I wouldn't I can't generalize too much. I don't know everyone and everything and everything that's happening. Yeah. But if you look at the what what I see as my slice of operators I I talk to and things I see, is it it still feels like we are looking at legacy systems.

Uh you know, one of the things that from a product standpoint, because I had Dan Wai Mura, he's the CEO of PushPress, which is uh a gym management platform, but very specific. They mostly do CrossFit and Jiu Jitsu and Boutique and independent gyms, right? Um but he was talking about like the speed at which features and products are coming out now due to AI is just bananas. Like it's really hard to keep up with, right? Like you can, like you just said, like, you know, and uh uh one of the things I'm watching now with OpenAI AI is their ChatGPT Health, right? Which is their new um it's it's their your personal doctor, essentially, right? So it's like all these things are happening at a such a rapid pace due to AI. And I'm I would imagine too, like if I was decided for some crazy idea today that I was gonna start a gym management platform, like I could build it much quicker than you could have two years ago, right? Yeah. Um so that means competition keeps coming up faster and faster. So it means you guys have to accelerate and keep maintaining your leadership role within the industry. So it's just it's a wild time. I mean, how um how does that change your life from a product standpoint, Daniel? How like it must keep you Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So so yes, on the one hand, it's really cool that you can build more with the same set of resources that you're having. On the other hand, it's like so over the past years, we have falling into the trap that delivering more and more every month will help, right? But in the end, if you don't reach the operator and don't build meaningful things and make the operator actually adopt the technology that's in place, you have actually won nothing. So and that's what I what I mean with this. We really need to focus on things that can be easily adopted. If you so I'm falling into that trap myself, right? So I'm on the side just building things with agentic development myself, just for the for the sake of fun. But you come to a point where so scaling the platform from running uh 500 gyms to a thousand to 10,000 to 50,000 gyms on a platform, that's actually a tremendous amount of work. And there you you come to you can come pretty far, but there's there's some kind of you need really expertly skilled architecture people in your team to actually build something that lasts for longer than two years. And we all know, so migration is not fun. You don't want to switch your membership management system every two years because you think you need something new because it's not stable anymore. Um, so that that's a tremendous amount of work. So I cannot predict where it goes.

The Future of Fitness Podcast is proudly brought to you by eGim. In an industry full of noise, with more features, more screens, more promises, eGim is focused on something far more meaningful. Progress that counts. EGM is a global fitness technology leader building the infrastructure behind real results. Their open ecosystem connects smart strength equipment, AI-powered software, and data-driven services to turn fitness into measurable, repeatable progress for members, trainers, operators, and communities. Now what really excites me is how EGM brings its ecosystem together with Wellpast, their corporate wellness platform. By combining their strength equipment with AI-powered software and their corporate wellness platform WellPast, they're leading the shift to proactive, preventative health. Isn't that what we all want? That's why we're here. The result? Members feel more confident and motivated, trainers have better tools to support people, operators see stronger retention and growth, and employers benefit from healthier, more engaged teams. This isn't innovation for show. It's progress you can see, measure, and repeat. To learn more, please visit eGim.com.

But it's super fun for as a technology guy to see the developments and see how our engineers, when I look over their shoulder, just building 10 things simultaneously with agents.

Yeah. Well, Irwin, I think this is the type of guy you want as your product officer, right? Who's just building stuff for fun and in off hours.

That's exactly what you want. But Eric, just want you to clarify. So I skipped that part. But we have we have we have a tremendous team which we've built over the last decade that is just insanely improving the product out there. So I can focus on other things now, but it's really it's just the team that's doing the main effort here. Yeah, right.

And maybe also that's good to mention, Eric. Uh we have uh between 450 and 500 people working in our company. Our main office is in Hamburg in Germany, but also in Warschau, in Melbourne. We have, let's say, a sort kind of location in London, and now recently we opened uh the office in uh Boston. We we look now outside on the city hall, so uh I think this is the the financial uh district. And uh yeah, I it's it's more for me that that I want to tell to everybody who's listening is is this takes time. This takes time. Uh yeah, I always say just go on a journey with us or with another company, but know that that especially in the in the area where we are operating, the enterprise area, the sales cycle takes twelve till eighteen months easily. This is not what you do quickly. It starts with uh drinking a lot of coffee, chatting about current situations, and then the moment there's a little bit of trust. Uh we do a lot of deep dives online, on location, really dive in the nitty-gritty of what's going on. Uh because you really want to build something together for the next five to seven years at least. And what Daniel said, you do you don't want to switch uh every uh two years. But actually I I want that that each operator get forced to do kind of uh RFP process in the next uh two years. Find out what's going on. And and uh besides us who are the great companies in this space uh who can help you. And yeah, that would be interesting. I think I believe in consolidation. So we we just uh talked about eGym and and the recent uh activities uh they have done now uh also in the US uh with uh Mind Body and ClassPass. And I think more consolidations uh will come in the next future, also to your question to 2013. So maybe there are now ten great players in who can uh operate uh cross-border, maybe in the future three or five great players. And then at least as an operator, you should know now what are the top ten players and maybe who are the top five, and shrink it down to a top three and invite them, drink coffee, listen, learn, what's going on, and don't be that boiled frog or missing out the opportunity in this industry to be the last because operators around you will go faster, faster by technology, and then you lose the game. Because it takes time.

I think that's the that's that's the main the main thing to convey is if you if you you need to think about digital strategy, you need to know where you want to go and what you think your fitness operators are different. There's different concepts, there's different approaches. So you need to know where do you want to go future-wise with technology? How do you want to leverage that? And if you know that, then you can basically look at your at your stack and in your infrastructure and say, am I ready to go where I want to go? And if you don't, then have a look at what could improve your situation out there. And that's what that's what I normally do all the time with operators is really looking into their technology stack, figuring out what their current situation looks like and how it could be improved in the future. With ours, hopefully with our system, but sometimes even that is not a fit. So it's just really figuring out what is best for you to move into the right direction of your own digital strategy.

Yeah. And then if you ask then an operator, and I won't say the name, and I ask him like two years ago, what's your tech, what's your digital strategy? And then the answer is, yeah, but we have everything arranged. We have Les Mills virtual in the group class, we have an e-gym circle in the gym, we have an app what we build, we're completely fine with our digital strategy. Yeah, that's sometimes the level. And then for us, the fun part starts. Then if we have a half hour, then uh he finds out after a half hour that's completely not what we mean with a tech digital strategy at all.

Well, that's the beauty of the open ecosystem for you guys, right? It's the the customization, the ability for you guys to get in and work with uh operators on their unique style of business, their member experience that they want, um, you know, all the things that give them a differentiator within their own market. So uh maybe I mean expand on that. Like if a conversation comes up and you're mentioning like all these different data sources, like what is the true value of an open ecosystem and how is that compared to maybe some of the other options in the market where that's not available?

Yeah. So so first of all, I have to admit that the first seven years of our journey we had, we were a closed shop system. So our approach was if you want to have the best customer journey, we just build it all ourselves. Right? So just everything from one vendor, don't have to pass over data at certain points. So we have everything in control. After seven years, we really recognized that if you want to spin a bigger wheel in the industry, you need to open up the platform. We need to be an open ecosystem because it technology is moving so fast and so broad, we just can't do it all ourselves. So we really made a 180 turnaround and opened up the platform. We now have our open API, we have our open partner ecosystem with 150 uh partners that are building use cases on our on our platform. And we have a marketplace where the operator can actually pick and choose from the set of third parties um to build their own customer journey. And we've gone we've gone to a point where we actually have competitive products in the marketplace to our own product suite. So we have a we have a lead management inside our system. You can connect with CRM platforms on our marketplace. We can just leave our ours away. We offer a branded app for our for our operators, but if you think there's another branded app you want to use, just go for that. So it's it's your it's really, uh Erin said, it's giving the power back to the operator. It's really um that that flexibility of building the customer journey with the tools you want. And then there's one thing that we always make sure is we are building use cases with those third parties where the data flows back into the infrastructure platform. So whenever something happens, you step on a on a on a Sega scale or an in-body scale or whatever body measurement scale you want, it can be placed in their app, but we make sure the data is flowing back into the system. So it's with the member data record, and it can be displayed in your branded app. If you use our app, fine. If you use your own branded app, you can display that data as well. And this is really the main point of how you how you build your infrastructure is you want all that data to flow back because otherwise you make yourself super dependent on the third party you have picked, because you're never gonna be able to exchange. Because if you remove that partner for someone else, you're just gonna lose a set of your data forever. So we make sure that this flows back into the into your and it's for free. That's maybe the that's a big one.

Yeah. No, it's not the big one. I think the most disrupting one in the US that our marketplace is fully for free. And we also encourage our partners on the marketplace not to charge API cost to the customers. And uh in Europe that model works perfectly. So we hope that we can take it with us in the in the US. And and then you have a very free, transparent, uh open model. We earn our money on the SaaS fees, not on our partners, on the back of our partners. And uh yeah, I hope uh that the operators will appreciate that.

When you say that's free, what would be like a typical model in which it wasn't free? Would it be they're charging, you mentioned like API costs or like where where all these fees start stacking up?

For example, right? So if you if you integrate with with platforms, you sometimes pay an API fee, sometimes you play pay some kind of a marketplace fee or something in that direction. And we tend to not. So it's it's really we want to have that API and that marketplace to build cool use cases for the industry that really drive something forward. It's really meant as an open ecosystem. That's why it's also competitive to our own products. It's like if somebody is actually able to build something better as our product team or our organization does, then it's basically good for the industry. Or we need to maybe work harder. And I always have the analogy of my of an old friend who always said, like, you only play Champions League if your bench players are world-class as well. Right? So if you if you don't feel competition on your on in your neck, you're basically getting slower. So we that marketplace is also something for us to keep us aware of. Okay, there's companies out there that are building actually cool AI things, so we actually build them as well.

Yeah, I love that. You know, maybe something we could have started with, but we're deep into this now. Like how how big are you guys? Like, how many gyms are you working with in Europe? How many different countries? You know, I I think the brand, Sport Alliance, and like all the, you know, how would people know you? And I know there's if you want to talk about it, I know you guys have had a nice little coffer of investments into your company, which uh gives you a very solid foundation to work strategically and build the product for, you know, uh you know, a long-term vision, right? So yeah, how how big are you guys? What how are you known in Europe? What kind of market share do you guys have? Maybe beat your chest a little bit here and tell people what's going on.

Yeah. So it's it's been it's been quite a ride. So we are roughly 12 years old. We started in the dark market with a software called Magic Line, which had like 2,000 operators on a legacy platform where the database was hosted underneath the desk. And we decided to build a next level cloud platform, which was Funded by our initial investor. And then we migrated all of the legacy customers up to our platform. We then started building the platform out. We added more features, we onboarded more customers. We grew to, I don't know, three, three and a half thousand uh operators. And then we expanded with a payment business in Germany. So we actually have a um financial services company offering factoring and debt collection services to the industry. So we are basically factoring, I think I I don't have the exact numbers, roughly around 500, 600 million a year on that. And we are doing that in mostly Dach market. We signed RSG and Cleverfit, which is the biggest franchise and biggest chain in Europe, at I think it's 2017 and onboarded them on our platform. And then we grew with them internationally. We then received our first funding round with the private equity investor PSG with roughly 60 million round. And then we actually consolidated the German market. So we actually bought the competition companies in Germany and migrated all of their customers onto our platform again. And you see that that similarity, we always migrate into our single into our single infrastructure. And as we grew through Europe with our bigger enterprise customers, we came to Italy, Spain, France, Benelux, UK. So we are actually servicing all of the European countries and roughly 50% of the uh top 30 enterprise operators in Europe. And we received another 100 million and we merged with Perfect Gym, which had which is also pretty widely known all over the globe. And we we still use a single technology stack in the future. So everything is still running on that. But we're using Perfect Gym as our brand for the enterprise operators globally, and we're using Magic Line in the DAC market as our DAC brand. So whenever you see something which is called Perfect Gym, you can have that with the this is basically our Sport Alliance platform. Sport Alliance is the is the mother company of all of those subsidiaries that is basically bundling everything together. And now with that, we are moving into the US and roughly servicing uh like 11,000 gyms. Wow. Roughly 12 million, 12, 30 million members on the platform and uh servicing, I would say it's roughly 50 countries all over. We have also an office in Melbourne, Australia, having a lot of customers in Australia as well. Um so it's really a global, global brand and a global business we've grown in. And now the US is actually really next step after we have mo conquered most of Europe um so far.

Yeah, and I think you have uh, or Daniel said, uh an 80% market penetration in Germany. In complete Europe, we have let's say 50% of all large operators who work with us. We are a very Abadap positive company, backed up by PSG, our private uh um investor. Um so it's not that we are like a startup in the US. It feels a little bit like a startup, the culture, because we we are really uh walking the roads, but we are backed up by a fantastic uh investor, fantastic history, fantastic experience. And uh we've done our homework, we've done the research now for two years, and yeah, now yeah, if you open up the office, we have officially now Sport Alliance LLC, then the story can begin. I love it.

I love it. Well, yeah, so uh you guys you gotta have your your your feet on the ground, right, in Boston. You got your headquarters, you have a strong right to win in this marketplace, from what I believe. You've done your research and you're having the conversations, you're working strategically, you're building relationships. So it's I mean, things sound like they're gonna go pretty well, but you gotta execute on it. And the last question I always ask on this show, guys, is what do you need help with? Like if people are reaching out, they're listening to this, and they're thinking, you know, hey, I want to connect with these guys, what would you like to hear from people about?

Yeah. Thanks for that question, Eric. Just talk with us. Our business model is also like this the moment you go live, you pay. So everything that happens in the front is I always joke for free. So you don't have to pay us to talk with us. So talk with us, discover what your current situation is. And maybe not only with us, but look very closely to your current situation and step out. Go in the world, look around, what's else outside the US market? What's there? What are European clubs uh doing differently? And we can help them. We we are so long in the fitness industry, so we can help them and and build nice relationships, and even if you don't buy from us, then still it's nice to connect, and uh we can learn also from them how the US market works. So um I love cappuccino, so I live in the Netherlands, but I spend 50% of my time now in the US, and I love driving the car and sitting in the plane, so uh feel free to invite me for a nice cup of uh cappuccino. I love it.

Daniel, anything to add on that?

I I I was laughing because I would actually have the uh set the same and talk just talk to us. I think um um so we are we are by design a European company. I think we so we have moved uh four or five of our senior people over from the headquarter here in the US. They are living here now. And um we we I think we we are and I've working with that company now for for nearly 12 years. We are a cool company, there's cool guys in our company. We just want to have fun and build technology in the industry. If you are a partner, if you build cool things, just come to us, talk to us. Maybe we can do something great together. If you're an operator unsure what to do, just talk to us. And if you just want to chat about uh technology, just uh come around. Because we're there. We are not good, we're not going to leave. Uh we are here to stay. Um, so uh really looking forward to all conversations. And there's so many events coming up this year, so there's plenty of opportunity to chat.

And what's uh what's the best way for them to get a hold of you guys? Do you want a LinkedIn? Is there email, website?

I'm in love with LinkedIn. So um course. Hook me up on LinkedIn, and then uh yeah, I've built in the last 30 years a great network. So probably if you look me up, you see that uh that person uh who looks me up has a lot of connections uh with me already, and uh maybe that feels safe. So uh just uh hook me up on LinkedIn. Yeah, I don't care.

Any channel is fine.

Well, I do um and I encourage people. I mean I I really enjoy our conversations with you guys. I learned something, and um, you know, I think you and I had a couple cappuccinos leading up to our partnership here in 2026, Erwin. So good guys to know, uh, really fun to talk to and uh just generally very approachable, especially at the events that I always found about you guys too, is like, you know, I started talking to him. I'm like, holy shit, like this is a huge company, and these guys are so casual, you know, walking around. Like there's, you know, very approachable is what I'm trying to say. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much, uh and Daniel. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Please for me. Thank you. See you soon.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Castbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it and want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the futureoffitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the future of fitness. Have a great day.