L Catterton Values Hyrox at $700M — But Its Founders Just Bought Back Control

Infront Sports & Media confirmed on September 8 that it has sold its majority stake in Hyrox, the indoor fitness-racing series, to a consortium led by private equity firm L Catterton. The buying group also includes Hyrox's own founders, Christian Toetzke and Moritz Fürste, alongside WndrCo, the investment firm run by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa. Financial terms were not formally disclosed by the parties.

Bloomberg and Sports Business Journal both reported the deal values Hyrox at roughly $697 million, a striking figure for a competition format that only launched in Germany in 2017 and ran its first event with about 650 competitors. Hyrox pairs one-kilometer runs with functional workout stations in a stadium-style format, and it has since scaled into a genuine global mass-participation business with events, training programs and a growing network of affiliate gyms.

The more interesting story is who ends up controlling the company. Reuters and Sporting Goods Intelligence both frame this less as a straightforward PE buyout and more as a founder buyback: Toetzke and Fürste are emerging from the transaction with a larger ownership position than they held under Infront's prior majority control. L Catterton is the financial engine behind the deal, but the operating and brand control reverts toward the people who built it.

That structure matters for how the next phase plays out. Infront, the Zug-based sports marketing and media group, had backed Hyrox's early growth and helped it professionalize as a global series. Handing majority economics back to the founders — while bringing in a consumer-focused PE giant with deep retail and brand-building experience — suggests the new owners want founder-led creative and community direction paired with institutional capital for expansion.

L Catterton is the largest global consumer-focused investment firm, with a portfolio spanning beauty, food and beverage, and lifestyle brands; it does not typically play in traditional sports-rights holding companies. Its interest in Hyrox signals that the firm sees the brand less as a sports-media asset and more as a global consumer/wellness platform — closer to a fitness-apparel or gym-membership business than a league.

WndrCo's involvement adds another signal. Katzenberg's firm has increasingly moved into sports and media adjacencies, and a stake in a fast-growing, youth-skewing fitness brand with global event and affiliate-gym revenue streams fits a broader thesis that participatory fitness formats can generate recurring, multi-channel revenue — ticketing, affiliate licensing, apparel, media — well beyond a single event.

For the broader sports economy, Hyrox's ascent to a near-$700 million valuation in less than a decade is another data point in the PE stampede into mass-participation and endurance sports, following capital flows into running events, obstacle racing and CrossFit-adjacent formats. Investors are betting that fitness communities with strong affiliate/gym network effects can be monetized more predictably than traditional spectator sports rights.

Hyrox's own ambitions extend further: the company has talked about scaling to millions more participants, launching new product lines, and even pursuing a path toward Olympic recognition. A capital structure that keeps founders financially and operationally invested — rather than fully cashing out to a financial sponsor — is often seen as reducing the risk of the brand drifting from what made it work in the first place.

Whether L Catterton's model translates into further consolidation of the fitness-racing space, or draws competitors and copycat formats chasing similar valuations, will be the thing to watch. For now, Hyrox becomes the highest-profile example yet of a founder-created fitness format graduating into institutional-grade private equity territory without the founders losing the keys.