Apple has cut part of its Fitness+ team. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported on September 20 that a "handful" of staff were let go. They worked on the Time to Walk and Time to Run audio sessions.
It's a small cut. Inside the team, though, it's seen as the start of bigger changes. Gurman's explanation, via 9to5Mac, is short: "considerable costs, ever-present demand for new content and subscriber churn rates."
So the richest company in tech has the same problem as every gym. People sign up. Then they stop.
That matters to you for a simple reason. Fitness+ is the polished version of something plenty of gyms sell: workouts on demand, filmed with good lighting and great coaches. If it can't hold people at Apple's scale, the problem is the model, and better production won't fix it.
What's actually happening to Fitness+?
It isn't shutting down. New audio episodes will come out less often, but they'll keep coming. Gurman has described the service as "under review" for most of this year, and Apple moved it under its health team and services chief Eddy Cue. His guess, and it is a guess, is that Fitness+ ends up folded into the Health app, probably in 2027.
That fits what else Apple has done this month. On September 9 it made its Readiness score free on Apple Watch. The direction is clear. Apple wants fitness features to come with the device you already own, not sit in a separate $9.99-a-month subscription.
Apple is also building something to replace it. Gurman has reported for months on a paid health service with an AI coach, which he calls Health+, and it's still expected to launch around now. If that's right, Apple is swapping a library of videos for a coach that talks back. That tells you what Apple thinks people will actually pay for. It's close to what you already sell.
Why can't Apple keep people subscribed to workout videos?
Because a video library is easy to join and easy to leave, and nobody notices when you stop. There's no coach asking where you've been, and no booked class you feel bad skipping. The content also has to keep coming, and that costs money every month whether people watch or not. Churn (the share of subscribers who cancel in a given period) is brutal across fitness apps. Only about 3% of users are still active at day 30.
| A workout video subscription | Your gym or studio | |
|---|---|---|
| What you're selling | A library | A place, a coach, a class time |
| Who notices when a member stops | Nobody | The coach and the regulars |
| Cost of keeping it fresh | Keeps rising, every month | Mostly fixed |
| Why people stay | A habit they build alone | People who expect them |
What this means for your gym
In August, when Anytime Fitness started giving members Fitness+, we wrote that Apple might need the deal more than the members do. This week's cuts back that up. The videos are a nice extra. They aren't why people stay.
Plenty of gyms and studios include an on-demand library in the membership, or plan to. Keep it if you have it, but treat it as a bonus. Don't build a price tier around it, and don't count on it to stop anyone leaving. If the biggest name in consumer tech can't hold people with polished video, your recorded classes won't do it either.
Apple can make the workout free. It can't notice when you stop showing up.
The Run RatePut your effort where Apple can't follow. A coach who texts a member after two missed weeks. A fixed class time with the same six faces. A first 30 days where someone at the front desk knows the new member's name. None of that can be streamed.
Video still has a job, just a smaller one. A short clip a coach sends one member for the knee they mentioned last week lands very differently from a library of workouts nobody asked for. Use it to follow up with people, not to replace the follow-up.
One quick check before you do anything else. Look at how many members opened your on-demand library last month. If you don't know the number, that tells you how much it's doing for retention.
Apple can sell the video. Only you can notice who's missing.