Matthew Januszek, co-founder of Escape Fitness and co-host of the LIFTS Podcast, traveled to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, alongside Mo Iqbal, Founder and CEO of SweatWorks, to record live on the floor of Beyond Activ — EMEA's biggest health, fitness, wellness, and sports festival. What they found was a market unlike any other: a Kingdom in rapid transformation, opening its doors to fitness and wellness businesses at a pace few outsiders anticipated.
This is Part 1 of a two-part LIFTS series recorded live at Beyond Activ, February 20–22, 2024. Across nearly two hours, Matthew and Mo spoke with operators and leaders who are actively building fitness and wellness businesses inside Saudi Arabia, probing what is working, what is not, and why this moment in the Kingdom's history is so consequential for the global fitness industry.
What This Episode Covers
Beyond Activ is EMEA's premier gathering for the health, fitness, wellness, and sports sectors, bringing together operators, investors, brand leaders, and innovators from across the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. The February 2024 edition in Riyadh reflected the Kingdom's accelerating embrace of active lifestyles and its ambition to become a global hub for the wellness economy.
The founder and CEO of Beyond Activ joined Matthew and Mo on this episode to describe how the event has grown alongside Saudi Arabia's own transformation. The summit serves as a platform for cross-cultural exchange — connecting Western brands and operators with the local knowledge and relationships required to succeed in the Kingdom.
The gathering drew representation from across the fitness spectrum, including executives from regional operators, international franchises, hospitality groups, and sports companies — reflecting both the breadth of the local market and the international appetite for a share of it.
Key Moments from the Conversation
- Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 is creating a structured blueprint for fitness business growth, with government-aligned investment actively encouraging culturally compatible wellness operators to enter the market.
- Cultural alignment is not optional in the Kingdom: businesses that treat it as a simple Western export opportunity consistently underperform compared with those that invest in understanding local values and community dynamics.
- The Kingdom's entertainment and fitness industries are undergoing simultaneous transformation, creating a rare window where new businesses can establish category leadership before the market matures.
- Recruiting and developing quality personal trainers remains one of the most pressing talent challenges facing fitness operators in the region, with local training pipelines still catching up to demand.
- The conversation surfaced examples of Western boutique brands that struggled to gain traction locally, illustrating how even strong concepts can stumble when cultural considerations are underweighted in market-entry strategy.
- Relationship investment is repeatedly cited by successful operators as the single most important factor in building a sustainable fitness business inside Saudi Arabia.
- With market penetration still relatively low and consumer interest rising sharply, Matthew and Mo's guests see the Kingdom as one of the most compelling growth opportunities in the global fitness industry right now.
Why This Conversation Matters
For Matthew Januszek, who has spent two decades building Escape Fitness into a globally distributed equipment brand and now focuses on North American growth through Escape Fitness USA, conversations like these matter because fitness is increasingly a global business that requires local intelligence. Saudi Arabia represents a new frontier where the lessons of building culturally resonant brands from scratch apply directly.
LIFTS exists to surface exactly this kind of insight — where macro trends and on-the-ground operator experience meet. The Beyond Activ Riyadh episode is a prime example of the show doing what it does best: putting Matthew and Mo in the room where the most consequential conversations in the fitness industry are happening, then sharing those conversations with the broader community.
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube
Related Episodes & Interviews
About Matthew Januszek
Matthew Januszek is the co-founder of Escape Fitness, the functional-training equipment brand he built from a UK startup into a global name supplying many of the world’s leading gyms, studios, and hotel fitness spaces. Following the separation of the UK and US businesses, Matthew’s focus today is Escape Fitness USA and the next chapter of the brand in North America. He hosted more than 300 episodes of the Escape Your Limits podcast and now co-hosts the LIFTS Podcast with SweatWorks founder Mohammed Iqbal, covering the business, science, and technology shaping the fitness industry. Explore more interviews and episodes on MatthewJanuszek.com.
About The Author
