Wellhub Acquires Urban Sports Club

Background

In September 2025, Wellhub, the global corporate wellbeing platform, announced the acquisition of Urban Sports GmbH, the parent company of Urban Sports Club, a leading European fitness and wellbeing aggregator. The $600 million deal combined two of the largest players in the corporate fitness aggregation market, creating the world’s largest corporate wellness platform, serving 39,000 corporate clients across 18 countries and connecting five million employee subscribers to 97,000 wellness partners. Both parties operate as fitness and wellbeing aggregators, offering framework agreements to corporate customers that enable employees to access a variety of fitness and wellbeing offerings through a single subscription.

Our Approach

The transaction required merger clearance before competition authorities in Germany, Austria, Portugal, and Spain. In Germany, the Bundeskartellamt noted that the merger would further reduce the already small number of aggregator offerings for corporate customers, but concluded that the market is dynamic and strongly growing, with larger competitors still active and no significant impediment to competition.

BRG provided economic advice to Wellhub during the merger proceedings across the notified jurisdictions. We assessed the competitive effects of the transaction, including the market definition and the competitive constraints faced by the parties, supporting the case for clearance.

Outcome

The Bundeskartellamt cleared the acquisition without conditions, and the Austrian Bundeswettbewerbsbehörde, the Portuguese Autoridade da Concorrência, and the Spanish competition authority likewise permitted the transaction to proceed.