PRIVATE EQUITY OWNED
SoulCycle
Includes Soul Cycle, SC
boutique fitness · New York, NY
- PE Firm
- Related Companies / Various PE
- Year Acquired
- 2011
They turned a cult fitness community into a shrinking chain of $40 bike rides nobody's taking.
What They Did
- Equinox took majority control in 2011 and finished buying out both co-founders by 2016. Co-founder Julie Rice cashed out her remaining stake for about $90 million, and the people who built the cult brand were gone five years after Equinox took over
- Parent company Equinox raised $1.8 billion in 2024 just to refinance existing debt, with PE firms L Catterton, Silver Lake, Ares Management, and Sixth Street all holding pieces of the debt
- Studio count has collapsed from a peak near 100 to roughly 57 U.S. locations by 2026, including a full exit from Canada and repeated closure rounds in New York and California
- Owner Stephen Ross's $250,000-per-ticket Trump fundraiser in 2019 sparked a national boycott. Bookings fell about 10% nationally in the days after, and weekend attendance in New York and San Francisco dropped roughly 15%
Since the Acquisition
- The star instructors riders showed up for had their premium pay cut in 2022 after a PwC benchmarking study found some were paid well above market
- A single class runs about $36 to $40 while the studio network keeps shrinking, so you're paying premium prices for fewer locations and less star power
- New York's attorney general forced parent company Equinox to pay $600,000 over subscription terms it failed to disclose and memberships that were hard to cancel — SoulCycle riders were among those trapped
Sources
- AG James secures $600,000 from Equinox for hard-to-cancel memberships — NY Attorney General(2025-05-30)
- SoulCycle closing 25% of studios — CNN(2022-08-15)
- SoulCycle layoffs and 19 studio closures — Athletech News(2022-08-15)
- How an Ex-Talent Manager Co-Founded SoulCycle and Sold for $90M — The Hollywood Reporter(2018)
- Equinox Group Secures Strategic Investments to Refinance Existing Loans — PRNewswire(2024-03-08)
- Equinox Gets $1.8 Billion in Fresh Capital to Refinance Debt — Bloomberg Law(2024-03-08)
- SoulCycle's Political Backlash and Drop in Attendance — Earnest Analytics(2019-08)
- SoulCycle sees attendance drop after Trump fundraiser flap — The Hill(2019-08)
- SoulCycle Changed Instructor Salary and Closed Studios in August — Athletech News(2022-08)
- SoulCycle closing multiple studios across U.S. — TheStreet(2026)
- Fitness Studio Chain Shutters Locations Nationwide, Including In CA — Patch(2026)
- More Than $30 for a SoulCycle Class? Not When a Recession Hits — Bloomberg Opinion(2019-09-17)