On August 19, Bilt and Equinox launched a partnership called Bilt for the Committed. Bilt members can now join Equinox from inside the Bilt app, upgrade and manage the membership there, book spa services, browse clubs, and redeem Bilt Cash against personal training, studio Pilates and spa. Joining unlocks a choice of welcome bonuses: 10,000 points, a complimentary personal training session, or a 50-minute spa service.
Bilt Cash is earned, for most members, by paying rent.
So the transaction now reads: pay your landlord, accumulate currency, spend it on a personal trainer. Equinox charges roughly $205 to $395 a month depending on club and tier, plus initiation. Bilt is valued at $10.75 billion and carries north of $20 billion in annualized spend.
Would a loyalty partnership actually sell more memberships?
Almost certainly yes, in the short term. Bilt knows where a member lives and what they pay monthly, which predicts a premium fitness buyer better than most targeting available, and it removes the join friction by keeping the whole flow in one app. Volume should rise. The cost lands somewhere quieter: the reference point moves. A membership sold directly is measured against what it delivers. A membership on a rewards menu is measured against whatever else those points could buy.
That second effect is slower and harder to see in a monthly report, which is exactly why it is worth naming now. The member stops asking whether the membership is worth $300 and starts asking whether it is a good use of points. The answer to that question is governed by an exchange rate somebody else sets, and can change without your involvement.
The technical term is the anchor price (the reference figure a customer uses to decide whether something is expensive). Equinox has spent two decades engineering its anchor upward, which is the whole subject of our piece on how Equinox competes on identity rather than price. Handing the membership to a points platform does not lower the sticker. It quietly moves the anchor from identity to arithmetic.
What you gain and what you hand over
| Selling direct | Selling through a loyalty platform | |
|---|---|---|
| Acquisition cost | You pay it, in ads and time | Largely absorbed by the platform |
| Who the member joins | You | The app, with you inside it |
| Price reference | What it delivers | What the points are worth |
| Ability to raise price | Yours | Negotiated |
| Renewal relationship | Direct | Mediated |
The left column is expensive. That is the honest part of this, and it is why Equinox did the deal. Bilt sits on exactly the data that predicts a premium fitness member better than almost anything else: where someone lives and what they pay monthly to live there. Renting that audience beats building it, and the cost is paid in margin rather than in cash up front.
We have watched this film before
The industry already ran this experiment once. ClassPass arrived offering fill for empty slots, and studios took it because the alternative was an empty room. What followed was a durable shift in what members expected, which we covered in how ClassPass trained consumers to expect optionality. Once the marketplace had the leverage, it widened into movies, smoothies and coworking, and fitness became one credit among many.
Bilt is the same structure with a stronger position, because it is attached to the single largest recurring payment in a member's life. Rent is not a discretionary category people churn out of. That is what makes the audience so valuable and the intermediation so sticky.
None of this means an independent should refuse a loyalty deal. Most studios have the opposite problem: not enough qualified demand, and a paid acquisition bill that keeps rising. A platform that delivers pre-qualified members at lower cost is genuinely useful, and we have argued before that revenue per member is often the only lever left once growth slows.
The test is narrower than yes or no. After the deal, can you still raise your own price without asking permission? Can you still reach the member directly? If both answers are yes, you rented distribution. If either is no, you sold the pricing relationship and got paid in exposure.
Worth noticing who is exposed here, because it is not the budget end of the market. A $19 gym membership is already bought on price and has no anchor to lose. The vulnerable operator is the one charging $150 to $250 a month on the strength of a story about coaching quality and community, which is most independent boutiques. That story is exactly what a redemption menu flattens, because a menu presents everything on it as equivalent and lets the points do the comparing.
Equinox can afford that trade. It has the brand equity to survive being a redemption line. The question worth sitting with is what happens to everybody who does not.