He Risked Everything on HYROX. Now It’s a Global Sport With 1 Million Annual Participants

I personally risked everything  to make HYROX happen for me. I borrowed more money than I ever knew  exists from family, friends, banks. For whatever reason, I went all in,  literally, and I didn't have a plan B.

Moritz Fürste had already reached the top  of his sport: Olympic gold in Beijing,   Olympic gold again in London, then bronze  in Rio. But after he left field hockey,   he was searching for something most  athletes never get back: a second arena. The idea became HYROX, a standardized  indoor fitness race built for the   millions of people who train in gyms  but did not have a sport of their own.

Four hours ago, we sold the one  millionth ticket for this year, 2026. We currently sold one million tickets  and with roughly another 500,000-600,000   to be sold till the end of the year  and we're operating in 34 countries. The format is simple and unforgiving.

Eight one kilometer runs, each followed  by one functional workout station. The   same race. The same order.

Anywhere in the world. If we would change the format, it  would just not be HYROX anymore. There are three numbers to  look out for in HYROX's story.

650 - the number of people at HYROX's  first event in Hamburg in 2017 1. 5 million - the projected HYROX  participants in the 2025/26 season and $270 million - HYROX's  projected revenue this year. This is Founder Effect.

My name is Moritz Fürste, that's  how everyone calls me. I'm one   of the co-founders of HYROX,  and I'm operationally the CMO. Before HYROX, Moritz Fürste lived what  he calls his first life: field hockey.

He played for Germany across three Olympic Games. I was 23 when we won our first Olympic gold  medal, I was 27 when we won the second one. These are emotions that are on that level, so  high, so incredibly like indescribable, almost.

Moving away from what I call my first life,  which was being a professional athlete,   actually is tough. And the second you finish  your career, you start asking yourself,   will I ever experience any kind of emotional  highs or lows like that ever again? A lot of athletes describe that as kind of a  hole they're falling into post their career,   and I was always scared of that.

That's why you say athletes die twice, because  it feels like an end to something that is,   I think, very difficult to  compare to anything else. Moritz needed something that could  replicate the intensity of being an athlete. I always wanted to be able to feel that fire,   that intrinsic motivation for something  again that I had when I was an athlete.

The path to HYROX was shaped in part  by a public disappointment in Hamburg. Moritz had campaigned for the city’s  bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games. The bid failed after a public referendum - but  the campaign connected him with sports-events   entrepreneur Christian Toetzke, who  would later become his co-founder.

That was a big disappointment, but that  was the time when Christian and I met,   and we did the process of this bidding  campaign together. The loss went into win,   because we ended up teaming up and creating HYROX. They didn't know yet what the product   would be — only what they had observed  about millions of gym-goers worldwide.

HYROX is the competition within the gym world.  People have been going to the gym for ages, and   we found the insight that 52% of the  people that go into the gym consider   fitness their sport. There was no sport  of fitness.

Fitness is not a sport. It's   a training methodology. We wanted to  create the sport that all these people   were already training for.

So HYROX is a mix  of functional fitness workouts and running. Now, it became a global movement  that people call hybrid racing,   which is the sport, and HYROX is the product. But before any of it could scale,   the founders gave themselves an operating  principle they would defend for years.

We wanted the athletes to feel like  Olympic athletes walking into a big arena,   to feel very special, to have their  names on screens. Everything from a   branding perspective, to the sound  and light systems - we wanted that   to be professional and something that  has never been done and seen before. Try to be so efficient in the way we  create the product that it looks much,   much more professional than it actually is.

Of course, nowadays we are investing more than the   2 million per event — but hopefully  it looks also like 15 million now. The first HYROX event in Hamburg was closer to a  proof of concept than a polished global launch. It had 650 participants - and Moritz himself  was doing whatever needed to be done.

I was actually emceeing that event,  because, of course, everybody was doing   everything. What I saw was just that pure joy  of those 650 people who were trying to finish   the race and trying out what HYROX was,  which they obviously didn't know before,   because that was the first time it  was ever presented on the world stage. I remember that I never, from that moment on,   really doubted that this is going to work.

I  was totally sold and bought into the product. That lit the fire to get up in the morning and  pursue this dream of making it a big sport. But the conviction came at a cost.

I personally risked everything  to make HYROX happen for me. I borrowed more money than I ever  knew exists from family, friends,   banks. I went all in, literally.

I didn't  have any money. I borrowed it. I was,   for whatever reason, convinced  that this is going to work out,   and I didn't have a plan B.

That's definitely not  a tip that I would give to the younger generation. I was always happy to take risks, and  in this particular case, it worked out. For two years, HYROX was proving  its model event by event.

Then COVID hit — shutting down exactly the kind   of mass-participation events  the company was built around. When COVID hit, that was obviously a  very, very big bummer for a business   like ours — mass participation events with  people that are supposed to do sports. We were not denying COVID, but we  denied the actual impact that it   might have on our business.

We  went into the office every day. With live events paused, HYROX  tried to keep the brand alive,   even when the product itself  could not operate normally. We did digital activations, competitions,   we invested money during COVID when everybody  else just shut down.

We did a lot for the   brand that made us come back stronger  post-COVID which was really important. And that bet paid off in 2022, when London  became HYROX’s first true tipping point. This was only possible because we did the work  through COVID for two years.

Engaging with the   community, writing emails, sending newsletters,  trying to do online competitions, especially in   the UK, hitting gyms, offering them post-COVID  for one year to have the license for free. The post-COVID event in 2022 was  the first sold-out event we ever   had on a day. We just sold out an  event — our whole world is going   to change.

But back then we did  not know what was about to come. The company had survived the  shutdown. And more importantly,   it had spent the shutdown building the  community it would need for the rebound.

HYROX has since become more than race entries.  It has built a multi-layered business. In 2026, we have four main revenue  streams.

One is ticketing — that   includes spectator tickets and athlete  tickets. Also in the tickets included,   are photograph solutions and some other  add-ons that we consider belong to ticketing. The next big revenue stream for us —  almost 15% of our revenue — is merch.

So,   we have our own Puma co-created merch range, that  we're selling at the events and the online shop. The third revenue stream is sponsorships — also  between 10 and 15% from the overall revenue. And then 10% of the revenue is gym  licenses — gyms can buy a license   from us and consider them an affiliated gym  to offer HYROX training at their facilities.

HYROX is on track to deliver around $270 million   in revenue in 2026 — and has done  it with almost no paid marketing. The reality is that we don't  do paid ads top of funnel. HYROX is a very explanatory product  that needs a lot of explanation to   fully understand what it is.

If  someone has never heard of HYROX,   it is completely a waste of money for me to just  push a paid ad to that person on social media. Instead, HYROX built through people  already inside the sport: gyms, coaches,   athletes and smaller creators whose audiences  believed they actually trained for the race. For HYROX as a sport, the most important  thing is authenticity in regards to whoever   is showcasing what they are doing  and that they are racing in HYROX.

At the beginning of course we tried through  partners of ours that would send us a couple   of influencer celebrities that would post  for us. It didn't sell a single ticket. The small gym guy with 4,000 followers,  but with a gym with 2,000 members,   posted something and sold 100 tickets for us.

That explains one of HYROX’s  biggest strategic choices:   it did not become a gym chain. It made  gyms part of the distribution network. We could open 100 gyms now worldwide,   and they might be very successful.

But then we  would only have 100 gyms that are doing HYROX. Now, currently, we have almost 16,000 gyms  where you can train HYROX. We don't want   to get into competition with our 16,000  gym partners.

So why should we open gyms   if we have the bigger picture in mind? For HYROX, the gym is not just a  sales channel. It is a local sports   club - the place where athletes train, talk,  recruit friends and prepare for race day.

HYROX’s growth has been strongest  across continental Europe, the UK and   North America — but the Middle East has quickly  become one of its clearest expansion priorities. Basically, our global expansion  strategy always entailed having   HYROX events. Our dream was in the 150  urban metropolitan cities in the world,   and we did a list.

We went through it  without having been to all of them. Abu Dhabi, Dubai, these were all cities  that were part of the list. It was always   clear that the Middle East are a very,  very important part of our business.

In Abu Dhabi, HYROX staged a race at one of the  emirate’s major exhibition and events venues,   in collaboration with its sports council. More than 3,500 athletes from  124 nationalities took part.  For HYROX, it was proof that the same  format that began with 650 people in   Hamburg could travel into one of the  world’s most ambitious sports markets.

But global demand creates a new problem.  The race can be replicated city to city,   but the experience cannot be overcrowded. Scarcity is important.

I mean, the reality is that  due to the fact that tickets are very hard to get,   that's what keeps people coming  back and keeps people looking   into opportunities to maybe even fly to  another city or travel to another city. We sold 15,000 tickets in New York in 2025.  We sold 55,000 tickets this year in one hour.  

We could have probably sold 80,000,  but internally we were already like,   we are crazy, we are nuts. Why  are we offering 55,000 tickets? Moritz’s next ambition is bigger than race  weekends.

He sees HYROX as a platform for   hybrid-racing, the broader sport  the company helped popularize,   and one that could eventually  have an Olympic pathway. I am 100% convinced that hybrid racing as   a sport will be included into the  Olympic Games over the next decade. HYROX as a brand will most likely not be an  Olympic discipline, but it's very likely that   the hybrid racing Olympic Games, if you want  to qualify for that, , you are qualifying   through HYROX.

That's a path we're working  on together with World Triathlon, the IOC,   and with all the players involved. It  would be a full circle moment for me   to see HYROX ending up being at least  the path towards the Olympics one day. HYROX is also expanding beyond the  race itself.

Through HYROX Experiences,   the company is trying to create more  moments between weekly training and   race day — from fitness travel to camps,  resorts and other community-led events. Music and sports are the only two things in  the world that can bring people together,   regardless of their ethnicity  or religion or whatever it is,   and these are celebration  moments that we want to create. After three Olympic medals,  a near-collapse during COVID,   and a sport now on track for $270 million,  Moritz resists giving founders a formula.

I am not a fan of advice at all. I don't think  there are good advice in life. My experience,   and this is what I can share, if  you believe in what you're doing,   then you should always pursue that.

And  you will know if you believe in what   you're doing — because if you are questioning  yourself, then you're not believing in it.