More than 11.5 million UK residents aged 16 or over belong to a gym, according to fitness trade body UKActive — a rise of 1.6 million since 2022. Add the popularity of CrossFit boxes and Saturday morning Parkruns, and the degree to which we have become a nation of fitness fanatics is clear.
But it is a notoriously tricky space for brands to ‘crack’ directly (unless you slap ads on gym windows, like Nestle did in Panama). While you can sponsor fitness influencers on Instagram, you can’t easily reach the solitary gym-goer in the same way you can with fans of more traditional, stadium sports.
One sport, however, exists in the perfect overlap — Hyrox. It combines the fitness obsession with a direct, head-to-head competitive format, giving it a spectator-friendly aspect that other fitness-first disciplines lack.
Amelia Hawkins, PR Director at Mongoose, said: ‘Hyrox has exploded because it hits a sweet spot between competitive sport, everyday fitness and a social experience.’
Hyrox is a standardised race consisting of eight 1km runs, each followed by a different functional workout station (ranging from sled pushes to wall balls). Hyrox has grown massively since its 2018 debut, which saw just 650 participants in Hamburg. The 2025/26 season is projected to attract more than one million participants globally.
This season will comprise 100 events worldwide, including a massive six-day residency at Olympia London starting next week. The top 0.5% of athletes from all of the events will then qualify for the Hyrox World Championships, set to take place at the Strawberry Arena in Stockholm from 18-21 June.
Last year’s coverage was streamed via Hyrox’s YouTube channel, a strategy expected to continue this season. The channel has more than 100,000 subscribers, with its most popular video surpassing 3.1 million views.
One change for this season is the partnership with connected TV platform Atmosphere TV. Announced in October 2025, it has moved the sport beyond YouTube and into 60,000 gyms, bars, and airports around the world. Viewers will likely only be paying passive attention at best, but it does demonstrate the sport’s potential to hit the (reasonably) big screen.
Big brands have already recognised the sport’s impact. Puma and Red Bull are the foundational ‘Tier 1’ partners, while Deep Heat and Deep Freeze showed how other brands can activate around Hyrox. Last year, the brand offered guided warm-ups and massages on-site, and amplified those stories via LADbible. As a result, it saw a 26% year-on-year rise in sales of its Deep Heat Roll-On.
While sponsors originally hailed from the fitness world, the 2026 roster is diversifying into lifestyle and finance. Partners now include AirAsia, Cigna, and BYD.
But one of the advantages of the sport is that it is still finding its feet in the brand space. Hawkins said: ‘Compared to events like the London Marathon or Tour de France, there are no legacy sponsors. This offers the opportunity for partners to come in, own something, mould it to however they want it to be and ride the wave while the popularity of Hyrox skyrockets.’
The sport is also a natural fit for social media. Hawkins added: ‘It’s visually perfect for Instagram and TikTok, with plenty of opportunities, eg, “before and afters” or emotional finish line moments, for brands to tap into throughout the journey.
‘What’s more, Hyrox doesn’t revolve around a single moment, it’s all-year and global. There is no downtime, giving brands a calendar’s worth of activations and storytelling opportunities.’
While co-opting the social media reach of stars like Jake Dearden (645k followers on Instagram), Hunter McIntyre (210k) and Jake Williamson (198k) is simple, imprinting a brand during the live race is harder. Because most competitors race shirtless (men) or in minimal sports bras (women), traditional front-of-shirt branding isn’t an option.
One interesting solution offered to that problem is branded temporary tattoos. Most Hylox athletes can be seen wearing them. For example, during his 2024 World Championship win, Alexander Rončević sported an ESN (Elite Sports Nutrition) tattoo on his chest.
Hyrox is not unique because it features ‘body billboards’ — boxing has periodically dealt with it for 20 years (GoldenPalace.com famously paid fighters like Bernard Hopkins to wear their URL), and Olympic track star Nick Symmonds auctioned his skin to T-Mobile. The difference is in the regulation.
For most sports the issue of branded tattoos has been like a game of whack-a-mole, with media owners and rights holders doing their best to ban or hide them so as not to devalue their own sponsorship deals. Hyrox is the only sport, at least that I could find, that actively permits and standardises them. The league issues strict guidelines for ‘Sponsor Body Tattoos,’ limiting them to:
- One on each upper arm (max 20 cm²)
- One on the chest or leg (max 32 cm²)
So if you’re the type of marketer who dreams of having your brand’s logo directly imprinted on a sweaty athlete’s skin, Hyrox may just be your sport.
Any elite Hyrox athlete with a social media account and some bare flesh therefore has plenty of opportunities to make money. But don’t get confused, for the amateur it remains an expensive hobby. Simply entering a competition costs north of £100, and that’s ignoring all of the travel.
‘Hyrox holidays’, like ‘mara-cations’, have become a popular way to see the world for a particular type of masochist and some travel companies are now offering ‘racecation’ packages that combine entry, flights (often via partner AirAsia), and accommodation. Hyrox has been compared to a drug by many of its biggest fans, and the sport appears to have an ability to become a lifestyle for its participants in a way that few others do.
But it’s that dedication which offers the opportunity. Alex Wilson, a strategist who has worked with leading sports brands, said: ‘If you’re talking about someone and say “they’re the kind of person who does Hyrox”, there’s a fair chance people will know what you mean. That’s a sign of huge success, for the brand, at least. Like CrossFit before it, the stereotyping shows how Hyrox has grown from a fitness methodology into its own subculture.
‘The imagined Hyrox fan is ambitious, agentic, image conscious and health obsessed. If that aligns with your brand, the opportunities are obvious.’