Getting tickets for fitness competitions like Hyrox is almost as hard as seeing Taylor Swift

Emily Harding had four screens poised and ready to try to get tickets when they were released. “I almost thought about roping in my housemate too,” the 34-year-old yoga teacher from London told Business Insider.

This wasn’t a Taylor Swift or Burning Man ticket release. It was Hyrox, a fitness race that’s taking the world by storm.

“It was like Glastonbury,” Harding said.

In Hyrox, competitors work in pairs or individually to perform functional exercises, such as wall balls, sled pushes, and rowing. These movements are sandwiched between eight one-kilometer runs. You win by finishing first. Entry costs up to $185 and the winner of the pro division gets a prize of up to $7,500. Unlike CrossFit, which was the dominant fitness contest in the 2010s and features highly technical movements like Olympic lifts, Hyrox was designed to be accessible to anyone who works out regularly.

However, as Hyrox grows more popular — even drawing away pro athletes from other sports, like CrossFit GOAT Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr — it is becoming harder to snag tickets, which are distributed on a first-come, first-served basis.

The first race, in Germany in 2017, featured 650 people. In 2024, over 650,000 participants competed in Hyrox contests globally, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing fitness events.

The hype is prompting gyms to launch their own alternative fitness contests, to cater to members who can’t get Hyrox tickets — mass fitness events that typically cost a little less to enter, and usually have a cash prize.

Moritz Fürste, one of the cofounders of Hyrox, told BI the organization is aware of the demand and is pushing to keep expanding and optimizing their service. Still, some of the event’s biggest fans are say change is overdue.

Tickets like ‘gold dust’

Harding described a Hyrox ticket as “gold dust.”

She first entered three years ago and had no trouble getting in. In fact, when she had to pull out for medical reasons, she couldn’t find anyone to take her ticket.

Her second attempt was in June 2025. “I was really gobsmacked how different it was from now to then,” Harding said.

Tickets were released in two waves, at 12 p.m. and then 5 p.m. Harding was applying for women’s doubles, so she and her friend each joined the queue on their phones and laptops. Harding was around 6,000th in the queue, and her friend was 10,000th, but then the queue glitched, and they jumped up to around 30,000th. Harding’s phone kept pushing her to the back of the queue, she said.

“If you were only doing this on your phone, I can imagine you’d be absolutely fuming,” Harding said.

Fürste said that server capacities are hard to control, but they are working hard to make the process fair, and it works very well 95% of the time. In 2024, Hyrox UK trialled a New York City Marathon-style ballot system to allocate race places, but the format was scrapped due to overwhelming demand and push-back from affiliates.

Harding and her friend finally got through on a laptop, but the tickets they wanted were sold out. They considered finding two guys to do mixed doubles, but while they thought about it, those tickets sold out too.

They finally got tickets when they tried again in the 5 p.m. release. “The queueing system was horrible,” Harding said.

Jamie Thorpe, a sales director from Leicestershire, has competed in two Hyrox games since 2022. He likes the event’s accessibility and energy, “even if many of the competitors seem to forget their shirts.”

The first time he entered, “we got a place easily — no queues, no ticket drops, no random ballots,” he told BI.

In the years since, Thorpe, 34, has tried to get tickets more times than he can remember, often recruiting friends to assist, but it’s got “significantly” harder, he said.

“The organizers can hardly be blamed for the success of their event, and I am fortunate to have attended two already, but that doesn’t stop it from being immensely frustrating to miss out so consistently,” he said.

Danny Rae, the UK men’s open Hyrox champion, told BI he’s competed in over 25 of the events and advises people struggling to get tickets to join an affiliate gym so they get early access.

“They do still get sold out because it’s in such high demand, but you get a better shot,” he said. “Another thing to consider is: people will naturally sign up for the Open races. People are scared of the prospect of doing Pro because of the word ‘Pro’. If you are active and you train most days, then just go for Pro and you’ll be more likely to get a ticket.”

Clifford Saul, a personal trainer of 17 years and the owner of The 200 Strong gym in Leicestershire, UK, thinks the rise of Hyrox is in large part due to the proliferation of fitness culture on social media.

“If social media were as prevalent as it is now, 10 years ago, I think that boom would’ve happened sooner,” he said. “If you put on an event now, it’s thrown in your face. All you need to do is look at one reel, and then the algorithms send you loads more.”

Gyms are putting on their own events for people who can’t get tickets

Saul is one of many coaches launching other fitness competitions to cater to members who can’t get Hyrox tickets.

He is part of a 30-person strong WhatsApp group of local fitness fans who all try to get tickets for each other. Some people never seem to have any luck, others have never had issues, Saul said.

With so many of his members missing out on Hyrox tickets, Saul decided to partner with another local gym to host their own group fitness competition called The District Games.

“The idea is that all the gyms in the area can enter teams,” he said. “We want to get all the local community together, put food on, have a DJ, drinks, a bouncy castle for kids,” he said. “And we’re doing this because we can’t get tickets for Hyrox. We can do it a bit differently, and it won’t cost £100 each.” Tickets cost £149 for a team of four.

On the other hand, some gym owners are staging large-scale events to rival Hyrox.

There’s Athx, a functional fitness contest, launched in 2023, that focuses more on strength than Hyrox. Another is Metrix, launched in March 2025 — an immersive fitness competition that combines high-intensity workouts with club-level production and world-class DJs. Each pair does as much as they can in each of the five 10-minute stations, with four minutes of recovery in between each.

Metrix founder Will McLaren, a personal trainer and former Royal Marine based in London, launched Metrix in March 2025, told BI the atmosphere is dark, so people don’t feel like they’re being watched, and the exercises are designed to be even more accessible than those in Hyrox.

“50% of people can’t do a wall ball because they haven’t got the mechanics, the overhead extension of the spine, and the anchor mobility to be able to pull them off, so I didn’t want to fall into that trap of being stuck in a set workout,” McLaren told BI.

Metrix also sells separate “social” tickets for those who just want to have fun and don’t care about competing — there’s a cash prize for whoever wins, though.

“It’s really important that everyone starts together and everyone finishes together. There’s no winners and there’s no losers unless you do want to compete for the money.”

The community aspect is important for McLaren too. Metrix has food vans, ice baths, saunas, and kids’ games for people to enjoy afterward.

“You’re paying £120 for a ticket for Hyrox. It’s a lot. People get the patch, they get half a banana, and they get told to go,” McLaren said. “So we wanted to make sure people could stay all day, enjoy the music, enjoy the atmosphere, and meet other people.”

Metrix is priced the same, but McLaren said he wants to offer more for that price. He said he is also hoping to partner with a dating app, to build on the trend of run clubs and fitness events as a place to find love.

Hyrox is rushing to keep up with its own success

Saul believes the younger generations’ love of fitness means group events won’t be going away anytime soon.

“17- to 24-year-olds, they’re not going out, drinking, and partying as much anymore,” he said. “They’re meeting up and doing fitness events.”

In a 2023 survey from McKinsey, more than 50% of Gen Z respondents (generally 13 to 28 years old) said fitness was a very high priority for them, compared to 40% of people across all age groups.

In the UK, 25- to 34-year-olds make up 42% of Hyrox’s demographics, and while there are older people doing Hyrox, the brand is mostly driven by millennials and Gen Z.

Fürste, the Hyrox cofounder mentioned earlier, said Hyrox’s next goal is “to deliver the best possible race experience for more than 1 million people in the 2025/26 season.”

They are planning to keep up with demand by launching more races in more countries and cities, with the aim of “taking the sport to as many people as possible across the world,” he said.

But for long-term Hyrox fans, the competition’s growth, both in the number of applicants and the fitness standard, has seen it evolve from the approachability that was part of its initial appeal.

Thorpe has done the pairs event twice with a very fit friend, and although their times have improved in many areas, their rankings have dropped dramatically.

“The increase in overall standard was extremely noticeable,” Thorpe said. “This is, of course, not a problem, but part of what attracted me to the event in the first place was the accessibility, and I hope they don’t lose this as the standard continues to rise.”

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