In this Feb. 7, 2013 photo, a man walks past a shuttered New York Sports Club on Water St. in New York. Town Sports International Holdings Inc., the owner of New York Sports Club and Lucille Roberts filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday, Sept. 14, 2020, as gym operators struggle to keep afloat amid nationwide shutdowns. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
By Damian J. Troise
The company that runs New York Sports Club and Lucille Roberts gyms filed for bankruptcy protection with COVID-19, still prevalent in man parts of the U.S., gutting membership rolls at fitness companies nationwide.
Gold's Gym sought bankruptcy protection in May and 24 Hour Fitness Worldwide filed for bankruptcy in June. Many companies, including Planet Fitness, furloughed workers in order to conserve cash.
Town Sports International Holdings Inc., which also operates Washington Sports Club and Total Woman Gym and Spa, said Monday that it can no longer pay its debts.
The company lost $136 million during the first quarter this year, only a fraction of which included state- and city-mandated shutdowns of retail shops, gyms, salons, restaurants, and bars. By the end of the three-month reporting period, 95 percent of Town Sports' clubs had been closed.
Town Sports operates 185 clubs and serves 580,000 members, mostly in the Northeast.
Gyms have been allowed to reopen at a fraction of their capacity in some regions like the Northeast. Those who do go to gyms in New York City are required to wear a mask at all times and gyms can only operate at one-third capacity. Group fitness classes are still not permitted.
Yet with more than 33,000 COVID-19 related deaths in New York, most of them in New York City, thousands of one-time gymgoers have taken their routines outdoors, or to their own homes.
Home fitness company Peloton reported a 172 percent surge in revenue during its most recent quarter and it doubled its subscribers. Bike shops in New York, as well as most outdoor fitness gear sellers, have been largely cleared out.
Venture capitalists and CEOs are clashing over the future of the internet. Web3 is the tech world's name for a decentralized, blockchain-based internet that runs on cryptocurrency. It was recently the topic of a tweet from Block CEO and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey who wrote that Web3 will not actually be owned by users, and instead be controlled by rich venture capitalists. Dorsey later shared that he was blocked on Twitter by Marc Andreesen, co-founder of VC firm Andreesen Horowitz, which has invested billions of dollars into Web3 and crypto projects. Correspondent for DealBook from the New York Times, Ephrat Livni, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss what this could mean for the future of Web3.
Jim Worden, Chief Investment Officer at Wealth Consulting Group, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says the period between Christmas and New Year's is difficult to predict due to a lack of institutional volume, with the Omicron variant adding even more uncertainty on Wall Street.
Prices at the pump this year reached a seven-year high, and a new forecast from GasBuddy shared with CNN predicts that gas prices will only continue to rise in 2022 and that the national average could even reach $4.00 a gallon; however, analysts at GasBuddy say anything could happen when it comes to gas prices in the future, as the pandemic has made it difficult to make any predictions about the economy. Consumer Energy Alliance federal policy advisor Michael Zehr joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
The record-breaking success of "Squid Game" on Netflix has many media companies competing to produce, stream, and invest in new content from South Korea. Netflix has spent half a billion dollars on developing Korean content this year, and other streaming services are taking note. Seth Schachner, managing director at StratAmericas and digital business executive, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Airlines had to ground 2,500 flights in the U.S. on Tuesday, with bad weather and workers out with COVID-19 blamed as the main culprits. Scott Keyes, founder of ScottsCheapFlights.com and author of "Take More Vacations," joined Cheddar News Wrap to discuss how the surge from the omicron variant has been creating havoc in the air travel industry. Keyes noted that a lack of personnel from pilots to gate agents had been exacerbated by the coronavirus, an issue also disrupting labor markets throughout the economy. "Add to that the fact that travel has rebounded far quicker than many analysts and experts predicted, this is why I think you're seeing so many airlines caught a bit flat-footed in having to pare back the schedules they had set months ago," he said.
