{"id":436716,"date":"2026-01-25T14:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T14:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/436716\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T14:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T14:59:09","slug":"david-lloyd-leisure-mulls-bid-for-eu-bureaucrats-favourite-gym-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/436716\/","title":{"rendered":"David Lloyd Leisure mulls bid for EU bureaucrats\u2019 favourite gym chain"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Lloyd Leisure is running the rule over an upmarket European gym group popular with influencers and Brussels bureaucrats as the British leisure firm pursues expansion on the Continent. <\/p>\n

Bosses at the Hertfordshire-based group are in talks over a potential swoop for Aspria, which runs ten high-end health and wellness clubs in Brussels, Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover and Milan, The Sunday Times understands.<\/p>\n

Founded in 2,000 by Brian Morris, a British retail and leisure real estate executive, Aspria\u2019s business includes one of Europe\u2019s largest health clubs in Berlin\u2019s Kurf\u00fcrstendamm district, spread across six floors of a 17,000 square metre site. It has a reported value of up to \u20ac200 million.<\/p>\n

Its Brussels gyms, meanwhile, have become popular among lobbyists and EU politicians for networking, with Morris, telling Politico last year that the firm \u201chad every prime minister pretty much since the time we opened\u201d.<\/p>\n

A deal would significantly increase David Lloyd Leisure\u2019s footprint in Europe, where it already runs 29 sites, by more than a third. It is thought details of a transaction could be announced in the coming month.<\/p>\n

It comes after David Lloyd Leisure\u2019s owners at private equity firm TDR Capital<\/a> U-turned on plans for a \u00a32 billion sale of the business, opting instead to place the company into a \u201ccontinuation vehicle\u201d \u2014 effectively selling it to itself \u2014 after no buyers materialised.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1982 by David Lloyd, the British tennis star, David Lloyd Leisure currently runs more than 100 clubs across the UK, turning over \u00a3860.7 million in 2024 on pre-tax profits of \u00a366.5 million. Lloyd himself left the company in 1996 after selling it to Whitbread for \u00a3200 million.<\/p>\n

In recent years David Lloyd Leisure has spent millions transforming its gyms into luxury spas in a bid to attract customers who are interested in \u201cwellness\u201d beyond traditional exercise and sports. They also offer desk spaces and phone booths for white-collar professionals who work from its sites during the week.<\/p>\n

Representatives for David Lloyd Leisure declined to comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Lloyd Leisure is running the rule over an upmarket European gym group popular with influencers and Brussels…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[64,63,538,137],"class_list":{"0":"post-436716","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}