How Planet Fitness Makes Money: 20 Members for Every Spot

How does Planet Fitness make money on a $15 membership? It took in $1.32 billion in 2025, and only 41 cents of each dollar came from gyms it runs itself. We follow Dana's $229 first year and watch the counter in the corner drop as every cost takes its share. Planet Fitness isn't mainly in the gym business. It's a franchise company: the royalty on every franchised club's dues, a national advertising fund, and the treadmills and machines it sells to its franchise owners. We look at the Planet Fitness business model through its own annual report: the price ladder from the Classic card to the Black Card, why a gym needs members who don't all show up at once, what the franchise owner pays before the first paycheck, and where the cash goes after the debt and the buybacks. In this video you'll learn: ✔ Why one Manhattan club had about 6,000 members and room for about 300 ✔ How the $15 card and the $24.99 Black Card make up the price ladder ✔ What the gym-membership study found about how often members go ✔ How the 7% royalty and the ad funds come off the top of every franchised club ✔ Why selling the machines is a business of its own ✔ How the company-owned gyms compare with the franchise side ✔ What a franchise owner sends out before rent and wages ✔ The debt, the $500 million of buybacks, and the slower 2026 ✔ What Planet Fitness actually keeps: 16.6% 📖 CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:38 What Planet Fitness really is 4:18 The price ladder 6:13 The empty room 8:29 The cut 11:25 The shovels 13:25 The gyms it runs itself 15:18 Who really pays 16:16 The deeper layer 20:58 How to come out ahead 23:28 The real margin 👉 Tell me in the comments: what's the longest you've paid for a gym you didn't use? Whiteboard Margins explains how businesses really make money, drawn simply. Every video follows the money through one business, and Margin shows the real number on his face. Subscribe for the next one. #planetfitness #businessexplained #franchise