• Login
  • Register
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In
The Daily Sceptic
No Result
View All Result

Fitness Chain “Burned About £500,000 per Day” After Losing 12% Of Members Through Lockdown

by Michael Curzon
21 April 2021 2:05 PM

Fitness chain PureGym suffered pre-tax losses of almost £215 million last year after the forced closure of its sites due to Government-imposed lockdowns. Large parts of the fitness industry fought to remain open during lockdowns with some gyms risking £10,000 fines by refusing to close their doors to customers. Before the second national lockdown, one gym owner said: “We should be doing everything we can to get people healthier and fitter,” adding that “gyms save the NHS”. But venues were forced to close, costing PureGym alone about £500,000 a day. The Mail has the story.

The Leeds-based company registered a massive 40% plunge in revenue during 2020 as gyms were shut for 44% of the year’s trading days. In pre-pandemic 2019, it recorded losses of around £40 million. 

Despite trying to strike a note of optimism after gyms in England reopened on April 12th, Chief Executive Humphrey Cobbold called the company’s trading performance “frankly awful” and “out of hands”. The financial statement exceeds his stated fears of a £120 million loss caused by shutdowns. 

PureGym reported seeing more than a million workouts completed across its 240 gyms in the first week of the roadmap as people try to shed unwanted pounds after being trapped inside for three months.

But in a statement released today, Mr Cobbold called 2020 “a very tough year” and blamed restrictions for “preventing us from trading” and causing “a severe impact on our financial performance”. He previously told the BBC that PureGym was “burning about £500,000 a day” due to “brutal” lockdowns. 

“We had to run a business with zero income for extended periods, a previously unthinkable scenario,” Mr Cobbold admitted today. “We had to make major operational changes in the tightest of time frames and alter our proposition in weeks that would have taken years in normal times.” …

PureGym is one of the biggest losers of the pandemic, with Covid restrictions hammering leisure, hospitality and travel industries hardest. 

Trade organisation ukactive has highlighted the impact of lockdowns on the nation’s health and the fitness industry in particular.

Polling by ukactive and ComRes suggested 42% of UK adults were sitting for at least 14 hours longer per week during lockdown.

A survey by ukactive of its members showed approximately 400 facilities had already been lost during the crisis, while lockdown had resulted in £90 million in lost membership fees each week.

January is normally a key period for new joiners and renewals and usually sees 30% growth.  

Worth reading in full.

Tags: FitnessGyms

Donate

We depend on your donations to keep this site going. Please give what you can.

Donate Today

Comment on this Article

You’ll need to set up an account to comment if you don’t already have one. We ask for a minimum donation of £5 if you'd like to make a comment or post in our Forums.

Sign Up
Previous Post

Border Officials Finding “100 Fake Covid Test Certificates a Day”

Next Post

Gove Ignores Pesky Mask Mandate

Subscribe
Login
Notify of
Please log in to comment

To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.

Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.

8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
rms
rms
2 years ago

Typo: Is the Twitter Event “Saturday, Jan 8th” (as stated above, or on Saturday Jan 7th or Sunday Jan 8th”?

The Twitter link says “tomorrow” which as of this writing is Sunday Jan 8th.

Last edited 2 years ago by rms
16
0
Castorp
Castorp
2 years ago

Very well articulated, thank you.

Please correct typo – ‘Noble prize winners’

31
0
TJN
TJN
2 years ago

It is perfectly clear that we need a Nuremberg II set of trials of those accused of these horrendous Crimes Against Humanity – worse crimes outside of actual wartime atrocities are hard to imagine.

But there’s a limit to what any such investigations and trials can achieve. The fact is, the vast majority of people willingly and even enthusiastically went along with this narrative, even though it was patently absurd from the outset. Are they to be put on trial too?

The Great Barrington Declaration actually came comparatively late in the late as regards suppression of arguments. In the early days (e.g. March 2020) anyone questioning the narrative was accused of being callously selfish, of ‘just wanting people to die’, and even of being a murderer.

When so many people are just so gullible – led like dumb asses, their stupidity being their rings through the nose – what hope is there for our society?

Sorry, much as I detest the perpetrators of this shitshow, what hope is there when so many people in our society have actively abandoned the ideas and principles which a minority of the rest of us regard as fundamental to life itself?

85
-1
Lancer
Lancer
2 years ago
Reply to  TJN

That is the mass formation I guess. Until established wrongdoings have been widely admitted and accepted, that point where a critical mass changes the perception that crimes have been committed, we can’t move on with any principles. That limit of where do we draw that line even within the ‘only following orders’ precedent? Who can we fault for being under the propagandised mass formation psychosis? I haven’t the answers and I’m neither equipped intellectually nor qualified to make those decisions but I would’ve thought in a general consensus those who were given responsibility and didn’t act in good faith when they knew of obvious inconsistencies within their profession and said nothing, they need to at least argue their case and then potentially be held accountable in some respect. Others that might miss that threshold are only to live with their decisions once the dust settles for us all to be able to move on and never make the same mistakes again.

17
-1
TJN
TJN
2 years ago
Reply to  Lancer

Interesting where the line should be drawn between the culpable and merely stupid. My feeling is it has to be pretty high up the food chain, or otherwise we couldn’t afford the jails.

Most of the minions – the useful idiots – should be left to live their lives quietly, with the more reflective among them aware that they’d been put to a test and failed.

I’m clear on one thing though: lessons have to be irrevocably learned, and that means facing up to what we’ve done and going through the concomitant pain.

15
0
rocky44
rocky44
2 years ago
Reply to  TJN

The scariest thing for me in this whole debacle was seeing so many people I knew to be intelligent and open-minded swallowing the propaganda whole, without the slightest attempt at critical analysis. Glib parallels with the 1930s easily come to mind, and we are now seeing this same scenario played out over the climate ‘crisis’ and the war in Ukraine.

In the quote variously attributed to Hitler and Goebbels “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it” it seems the word ‘eventually’ may be redundant. This strategy worked for the powers that be from day 1 of the pandemic.

34
0
7941MHKB
7941MHKB
2 years ago
Reply to  TJN

I don’t think most people would accept that the burden of guilt and appropriate punishment between Hermann Göring on one hand and some German youth put into a uniform and given a rifle in 1945, were quite equivalent.

Those who headed up this disaster with relish (for example Professor Pantsdown Ferguson of “reaised we could get away with it” fame. But also whoever appointed him despite the fact that he had a long record of absolute incompetence. Or Fauci. Those people must go on trial.

25
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
2 years ago

To the author:

I believe the twitter account of ‘TCW – Defending Freedom’ is still closed, could you perhaps exert some pressure to have the account unlocked?

36
-1
Dr G
Dr G
2 years ago

I frequently test the waters by asking friends, family, other doctors, if they have heard of the Great Barrington Declaration, the WEF, Klaus Schwab, etc.
I am yet to meet anyone who has heard of these, other than my few red-pilled friends.
Despite Twitter opening up, most social media and all MSM merrily continue the censorship leaving the vast majority of the populace blissfully ignorant of what’s really happening in the world.

27
0
7941MHKB
7941MHKB
2 years ago
Reply to  Dr G

That’s perfectly true.
Many, quite intelligent people are quite prepared themselves to accept that things here in 2023 are obviously seriously amiss. Some have crackpot theories about what should be done ( often involving slime like Kneel Starmer), but very few are willing, or perhaps able, to look deeply into what is going on.

Obviously, not a new phenomenon. How many extremely intelligent Jews in early 1938 could see which way the wind was blowing and get the Hell out? Dreadful. Should you just blame them for being unable to control their hope that basic humanity would in the end, save them?

11
0
Gefion
Gefion
2 years ago
Reply to  Dr G

Absolutely true… The times I’ve mentioned some of the above have seen me being called a conspiracy theorist, a fantasist and willing to believe anything I read on the internet. It would seem that, as a reasonably intelligent person, I’ve lost the plot. The conversation is swiftly moved on to something else.

Sadly I seem to have no red-pilled friends but my husband now knows who Klaus Schwab is… He doesn’t believe that the WEF could expect their plans to come to fruition. It’s one of a few elephants that we live with.

11
0
ELH
ELH
2 years ago
Reply to  Gefion

My husband says I believe everything I read – my silent response to him is at least I read… Hs is very well educated and believes and trusts the establishment and doesn’t want to think that anything is amiss, however one of his friends has told him that he believes everyone who has been vaccinated will be dead in 5 years. I said I hoped that wouldn’t be the case…(husband 3 x jabs, terrible headaches with the AZ) so we live with elephants too.

14
0
Gefion
Gefion
2 years ago
Reply to  ELH

I didn’t think I would be alone. My husband is well educated too but reads the MSM and watches BBC News. However, he has also taken to watching GB News recently and has learned a few things from it. We never discuss the vaccinations – he’s had 2 – and he must have heard about the unwanted side-effects of them. His own health has been compromised but it’s explained away by the fact that heart issues are A Thing in his family, The fact that in his case his issues didn’t appear until after his second vaccination is never mentioned.

I have told him about the concern about the vaccines’ effect on fertility and the spike protein appearing to concentrate in ovaries. This is something I find worrying as one of my sons and his wife are planning to have a baby in the near future and the possibility of infertility is something I’m very aware of. However, said son and his wife are vaccinated up to hilt and I’m not an interfering mother-in-law so there’s nothing I can do and certainly nothing that I will say. Another elephant to ignore!

5
0
Corky Ringspot
Corky Ringspot
2 years ago

And now they’re turning their attention to climate change…

10
0
D J
D J
2 years ago

Government used fear and the tool was MINDSPACE practised by psychologists from the benign sounding Nudge Unit.

7
0
varmint
varmint
2 years ago

“Truth”————–A judgement or proposition that is true. A statement in accord with reality. ————-Now who could possibly disagree with “Truth”? —Apparently this happened on a regular basis in places like Twitter to such an extent that statements in accord with reality were often not permitted. ——Are we to assume this state of affairs no longer exists?

0
0
Smudger
Smudger
2 years ago

Well argued article, short and hard hitting. Thanks.

2
0
VAX FREE IanC
VAX FREE IanC
2 years ago

A “Hallelujah!” Feature. Thankyou. I have saved this with all the other features and articles that I have gathered over the last 3 years. A historical record of one of the most infamous periods in human history. And yet it continues. 3 years down the clown road and many STILL believing the propaganda machine. The cork is slowly coming out now….Surely!

When youre dead.jpeg
8
0

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

DONATE

PODCAST

The Sceptic EP.37: David Frost on Starmer’s EU Surrender, James Price on Broken Britain and David Shipley on Lucy Connolly’s Failed Appeal

by Richard Eldred
23 May 2025
8

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

There Will Be No Climate Catastrophe: MIT Professor Dr Richard Lindzen

29 May 2025
by Hannes Sarv

News Round-Up

29 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

So Renters WILL Pay the Costs of Net Zero

29 May 2025
by Ben Pile

German Pensioner Receives 75-Day Prison Sentence in Latest Speech Crime Scandal to Hit the Federal Republic

29 May 2025
by Eugyppius

Miliband Accused of Pitting “Neighbours Against Neighbours” After Scrapping Heat Pump Rule

29 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

So Renters WILL Pay the Costs of Net Zero

30

News Round-Up

24

There Will Be No Climate Catastrophe: MIT Professor Dr Richard Lindzen

23

Trump is Handing Africa to the Chinese for the Sake of Social Media Clout

19

‘Woke’ Rail Company Fails to Mention Women in Free Tampon Scheme

14

Trump is Handing Africa to the Chinese for the Sake of Social Media Clout

29 May 2025
by Noah Carl

Hooked on Freedom: Why Medical Autonomy Matters

29 May 2025
by Dr David Bell

So Renters WILL Pay the Costs of Net Zero

29 May 2025
by Ben Pile

The Net Zero Agenda’s Continued Collapse Into Chaos

28 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Alasdair MacIntyre 1929-2025

27 May 2025
by James Alexander

POSTS BY DATE

April 2021
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« Mar   May »

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union

NEWSLETTER

View today’s newsletter

To receive our latest news in the form of a daily email, enter your details here:

POSTS BY DATE

April 2021
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
2627282930  
« Mar   May »

DONATE

LISTED ARTICLES

  • Most Read
  • Most Commented
  • Editor’s Picks

There Will Be No Climate Catastrophe: MIT Professor Dr Richard Lindzen

29 May 2025
by Hannes Sarv

News Round-Up

29 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

So Renters WILL Pay the Costs of Net Zero

29 May 2025
by Ben Pile

German Pensioner Receives 75-Day Prison Sentence in Latest Speech Crime Scandal to Hit the Federal Republic

29 May 2025
by Eugyppius

Miliband Accused of Pitting “Neighbours Against Neighbours” After Scrapping Heat Pump Rule

29 May 2025
by Richard Eldred

So Renters WILL Pay the Costs of Net Zero

30

News Round-Up

24

There Will Be No Climate Catastrophe: MIT Professor Dr Richard Lindzen

23

Trump is Handing Africa to the Chinese for the Sake of Social Media Clout

19

‘Woke’ Rail Company Fails to Mention Women in Free Tampon Scheme

14

Trump is Handing Africa to the Chinese for the Sake of Social Media Clout

29 May 2025
by Noah Carl

Hooked on Freedom: Why Medical Autonomy Matters

29 May 2025
by Dr David Bell

So Renters WILL Pay the Costs of Net Zero

29 May 2025
by Ben Pile

The Net Zero Agenda’s Continued Collapse Into Chaos

28 May 2025
by Ben Pile

Alasdair MacIntyre 1929-2025

27 May 2025
by James Alexander

SOCIAL LINKS

Free Speech Union
  • Home
  • About us
  • Donate
  • Privacy Policy

Facebook

  • X

Instagram

RSS

Subscribe to our newsletter

© Skeptics Ltd.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Articles
  • About
  • Archive
    • ARCHIVE
    • NEWS ROUND-UPS
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Premium
  • Donate
  • Log In

© Skeptics Ltd.

wpDiscuz
You are going to send email to

Move Comment
Perfecty
Do you wish to receive notifications of new articles?
Notifications preferences