Australia has one of the highest gym densities per capita in the world. 24/7 chains have blanketed suburban retail strips. Before you commit to 300sqm and a 5-year lease, here is how to read the location data.
3,500+
Gyms and fitness centres operating in Australia (IBISWorld: Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia)
$2.4B
Annual industry revenue (IBISWorld: Gyms and Fitness Centres in Australia)
3km
Typical max travel for suburban members (AusPlay participation patterns; site-selection guides)
The saturation problem you cannot ignore
Finding a suburb without a gym was easy a decade ago. Today it is the challenge. Anytime Fitness, Snap Fitness, Plus Fitness and Jetts have each opened hundreds of locations. Before doing anything else, map every gym, yoga studio, pilates studio and CrossFit box within 2km of your target location — not 500m. For gyms, the competitive radius is wider.
The boutique fitness market is growing, but competition has grown faster. Your positioning and location both need to be right.
Residential catchment: the most important variable for gyms
Unlike cafes, gyms are destination businesses. Members research, try a class and commit. The data that matters is whether enough of the right people live within a distance they will actually travel. For most members, that is 2–3km by car or 1–1.5km on foot.
Minimum residential catchment thresholds
General fitness gym (250sqm+): 8,000+ households within 3km, age 22–50. Boutique fitness studio (under 150sqm): 5,000+ households within 2km, higher income. 24/7 budget gym: needs a suburb without an existing 24/7 operator nearby.
Map competitors before you fall in love with a floor plate
Count every fitness business within 2km — big-box gyms, 24/7 franchises, yoga, pilates, CrossFit, F45-style studios, hotel gyms, and council leisure centres. Geoapify or Google Maps exports are enough for a first pass; your feasibility model needs both a number and a quality read (ratings, tenure, pricing).
The floor plate and rent maths
Gyms need 200–500sqm of clear floor space. At $80/sqm/year, a 300sqm gym costs $24,000/year ($2,000/month) for rent alone. At $60/week membership, you need 33 members just to cover rent. At 150 active members, rent sits at roughly 22% of revenue — already dangerously high. You need 200+ members for rent to approach 12–15%.
How Locatalyze scores a gym (Scoring v2.1)
Same public weights as every other category: Rent Affordability 20%, Competition 25%, Market Demand 20%, Profitability 25%, Location Quality 10%. For gyms, Market Demand emphasises residential catchment and income; Competition picks up every studio within the mapped radius; Profitability tests membership economics against your rent envelope. Run your exact address — the report breaks each factor with competitor maps, not suburb generalities.
Have a shortlist of warehouse or retail shells? Drop in the address for a gym-format report in under two minutes.
Analyse a gym site → →Demographics: the numbers landlords never show you
Pull ABS QuickStats for the SA2 around your site: median household income, age 25–44 share, apartment vs separate-house mix, and weekly rent paid (proxy for discretionary squeeze). Boutique studios typically need median HHI above ~$85k or a very dense young-renter pocket with limited supply. If income is below $75k, you either need a budget price point or a format with lower rent intensity (small-footprint class studio).
Physical requirements and access
Finding the market gap in 2026
The gaps that still exist in the Australian gym market: group training studios in suburbs where only 24/7 chains operate; reformer pilates and functional training in high-income suburbs still served only by budget chains; sport-specific martial arts and skills training in residential growth corridors. If you find one of these gaps backed by strong demographics, the location opportunity is real.
About the author
Ella Nguyen
Hospitality contributor, Locatalyze
Ella works with independent food and beverage operators across Melbourne and Sydney. After co-founding a small hospitality consultancy in 2023, she started analysing what actually separated the locations that survived from those that did not. She joined Locatalyze in 2024 and focuses on translating data into practical advice for first-time operators.
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