Boutique fitness studios pop up on every street in every city as if they are the first to revolutionize a workout. The highly concentrated market of fitness studios challenges a multitude of these businesses from staying afloat. They offer promises of a fun and efficient workout and give their clients a sense of feeling healthy for a week for the one hour they spend in a workout class. As more and more studios open, the number of competitors increases, forcing changes in pricing. As an avid studio attendee myself, I always question how much I’m willing to pay for a certain workout. This is impossible to answer because of the tradeoff I see in getting in my workout. I will always crave a workout where I am surrounded by others who are doing the exact same moves I am doing, all while feeling a sense of community every time I walk into my favorite studio, Sync Yoga and Cycle. Clearly, prices have not reached my peak point where I must walk away from the workout studio experience, and I am not alone.

The emphasis on what we love to call “wellness” encourages high spending on workouts. Wellness is the rechristening of the word vanity. Our physical and mental health is a result of a societal need to advertise what we do to work on our personal wellness. A workout becomes an excuse to show your followers that you care about your health, but only a few hours later, the same person that spent $35 on a Soulcyle class can be seen posting their brunch photos of an unquestionably unhealthy meal. I then explore the true intent our Soulcycle lover has in advertising the morning workout. Is it truly for personal wellness or just to make sure everyone knows you’re on par with current trends? Every time someone chooses to post their workout, the true winner is the studio. Soulcylce will get the client’s $35 as well as a free advertisement with every post. This encourages a faulted system as studio owners begin to focus more on creating an Instagrammable studio instead of a product that is worth what a client is spending.

A growing number of Americans are joining fitness centers. In the past 10 years, visits to fitness centers are up 42%. This jump in people who seek out fitness through outside-of-the-home means seems to be an appealing business opportunity for those in the industry. Many of the boutique studio owners who took advantage of this opportunity may now see the consequences of pursuing a business that many others were inspired to create. There are only so many hours in a day, allowing a limited number of classes and, based on the size of the studio, a limited number of students per class. To maximize productivity is nearly impossible, so studios seek out other means for revenue generators, potentially compromising the workout.

What Soulycle has achieved is what many strive to match. They have developed a brand outside of the workout. They sell an endless amount of workout clothes, all branded with the Soulcycle logo, and more recently have strangely entered the home goods market. A workout studio has somehow developed so much trust with its clients that they can confidently enter an entirely different market. Soulcycle continually loses its top teachers, like Angela Davis, famously known as Beyonce’s favorite spin instructor, to more workout-focused companies. Those who value a workout over a brand are making it obvious that Soulcycle is no longer the peak of an instructor’s career, but now a stepping stone. Similarly, Soulcycle recognizes that the brand and products are the catalysts for success, not the workout class itself. Soulcycle will stay alive in this oversaturated industry because of its ability to create a brand-obsessed client base, while other boutique studios who may have the greatest workout but not the same cult-based following or picture-perfect decor cannot compete and will ultimately suffer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-17/more-than-30-for-a-soulcycle-class-not-when-a-recession-hits

Since the establishment of the renowned Best Picture oscar, studios have campaigned for their movie to compete for the award, spending millions per year, even if there hasn’t been an oscar “bump” since 2012.

The change of the oscar “bump”

An Oscar “bump” is the winner or nominee of the best picture category gaining more viewership and box office money after the Oscars award show. There hasn’t been more than a 7 million dollar “bump” at the box office since the silent film “The Artist” won in 2012. So why do studious such as Netflix, A24, and Columbia pictures continue to spend 10-20 million dollars a year to campaign their films if the box office success after the oscar bump does not outweigh the costs? Is it because of clout within the industry to gain more rights to critically acclaimed pictures? Or is it because the economy and social structure has changed to where less people go to the theatre and more people view movies on their laptop on streaming services? How about both? Viewership matters most to studios so it does not matter if the film is being viewed on streaming services or the theatre? Or does it? Obviously, studios like Sony and Columbia pictures would love everyone to get off streaming services and go to the theatre if they do not have a partnership with the given streaming service. But Netflix, that is buying enormous amounts of oscar-nominated content, would love the bulk of their viewership to come from their streaming service. The economic incentive to promote these movies for studios is to gain even more rights to other critically acclaimed movies. There is a cutthroat competition that is ensuing between theatre-driven companies such as A24, Columbia, and Sony, and streaming service giants such as Netflix and Amazon Prime(which both spend and promote tons of movie content to get people to watch). Furthermore, the “Oscar bump” is and isn’t what it used to be. It has always been to gain viewership of the movie they promoted but it’s not completely in the theatres anymore. The bump is happening much more on streaming services and to realistically gather the revenue/profits made off of the promotion, streaming service viewership data would have to be included with box office money to get an accurate description of if promoting the picture is worth it. I can tell you this though, if it wasn’t making them money, they would not continue to spend millions to promote it!

Further information on the economic incentive.

It is just as important for an independent company to invest in critically acclaimed pictures to enter the cutthroat competition. A few years ago, A24 was just a small independent studio trying to enter the competition. Since 2016, we have seen an independent film company such as A24 rise to prominence after “Moonlight” won the studio its first best picture award in 2016. Since 2016, not only has A24 received the rights to huge box office successes such as “Hereditary” and “The Lighthouse”, but also critically acclaimed films that are supposed to be up for multiple Oscar nominations such as the upcoming releases of “Waves” and “Uncut Gems”, and the already released “The Farewell” and “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”. Its 2016 best picture winner, Moonlight, did not have a huge “Oscar Bump” with box office success or streaming services until late 2018 when it appeared on the Netflix streaming service. Although Moonlight did not garner an extreme amount of box office success or streaming service recognition after its best picture win, it catapulted the smaller/independent studio in A24 to a household name that will continue to have rights to critically acclaimed films for years to come.

Conclusion!

In conclusion, the economic incentive for studios to promote critically acclaimed films relies on how much they make off both streaming services and box office money, and the prestige the award gives the studio to gain rights to more critically acclaimed movies. Promoting the film then proves to be an investment for the studio. Yes, sometimes the studio will lose money if their picture did not get nominated or win when they spent 10 million dollars promoting it. But, a lot of the time it will make the studios’ money in the long run as the investment will pay off. This gives more of an incentive for independent studios to look at A24 as an example to promote and gain rights to a critically acclaimed picture that will lose them money in the short run, but in the long run, it will catapult them into a competition to gain rights to more and more critically acclaimed films.