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.
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.
Founded in 2,000 by Brian Morris, a British retail and leisure real estate executive, Aspria’s business includes one of Europe’s largest health clubs in Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm district, spread across six floors of a 17,000 square metre site. It has a reported value of up to €200 million.
Its Brussels gyms, meanwhile, have become popular among lobbyists and EU politicians for networking, with Morris, telling Politico last year that the firm “had every prime minister pretty much since the time we opened”.
A deal would significantly increase David Lloyd Leisure’s 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.
It comes after David Lloyd Leisure’s owners at private equity firm TDR Capital U-turned on plans for a £2 billion sale of the business, opting instead to place the company into a “continuation vehicle” — effectively selling it to itself — after no buyers materialised.
Founded in 1982 by David Lloyd, the British tennis star, David Lloyd Leisure currently runs more than 100 clubs across the UK, turning over £860.7 million in 2024 on pre-tax profits of £66.5 million. Lloyd himself left the company in 1996 after selling it to Whitbread for £200 million.
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 “wellness” 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.
Representatives for David Lloyd Leisure declined to comment.