CDO-Fitness sees concession fitness segment heading toward concentration

CDO-Fitness chief Jaime Gutiérrez used the Wuics stage at the CAR de Sant Cugat to put a blunt marker on the concession business: the segment is moving toward concentration. He made the case in front of about 200 fitness professionals, alongside names such as Josep Figueras of SorliSport, Rod Hill of Fit Brand International and Héctor Cruz, turning what could have been a broad market discussion into a direct warning about who will still be standing when the next contract rounds come around.

That matters in Barcelona and Catalonia because the public side of the fitness market is still enormous and deeply embedded in how the city delivers sport. Barcelona’s municipal sports-facilities directory lists 1,253 results, and the city says that network helps make sport accessible across Barcelona. In practice, that means municipal and institutional contracts still shape a meaningful slice of local demand, from sports centers to publicly linked facilities. If concessions become more concentrated, scale will stop being a nice-to-have and become a gatekeeper.

Gutiérrez’s point lands hard because the segment is still not fully mature. Palco23 reported that he described the industry as still being “bastante en pañales,” which is exactly why the consolidation warning matters now rather than later. A market that early in its development can still be reshaped by a few bigger operators with deeper balance sheets, more specialized procurement teams and the ability to absorb thin margins while waiting for a return on investment.

For mid-sized operators, the pressure is obvious. In a concession-heavy market, the winners are likely to be groups that can handle staffing, compliance, reporting and capital upgrades without blinking. Smaller players that once competed center by center may need to specialize, partner or merge to stay relevant. The alternative is being squeezed out by larger groups that can bid more aggressively and still fund the service levels municipalities expect.

Barcelona is already giving a glimpse of what that market looks like on the ground. The city published a concession tender for the La Sagrera municipal sports center in 2025, and its own sports site lists Duet Sports as the managing entity for Centre Esportiu Municipal Cotxeres Borbó. When Sixth Street and Ithaka announced their acquisition of Duet Sports in December 2020, they said the company operated ten centers across Catalonia and Spain. That is the kind of footprint Gutiérrez was pointing toward: not just one club, but a platform built to win and run public contracts at scale.

The message from Sant Cugat was clear. In Barcelona’s public-sport ecosystem, consolidation is no longer an abstract industry theme. It is becoming the deciding factor in who gets the next concession, who can invest in the next upgrade and who gets left behind.