Beachbody CEO weighs in on the rise in at-home fitness during pandemic

BeachBody CEO Carl Daikeler joins Yahoo Finance’s On The Move to discuss a surge in demand for home fitness video-streaming services.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: You're watching Yahoo Finance. I'm Julie Hyman. As you see the markets rise today, we've been talking with various companies who are trying to get people active in their own homes. One of them is Beachbody, and we're joined now by the founder and CEO, Carl Daikeler, from Los Angeles.

Carl, your network is already largely online. And I know you've seen a lot of folks continue to sign up for this. How do the logistics work of how you do your classes? I know there have been questions about some of your competitors like a Peloton, for example, which, until earlier this week, was still doing with a skeleton crew in-person, streaming classes. What are you guys doing on that front?

CARL DAIKELER: Well, we've been doing this business model of turning the home, the spare bedroom, the garage, into a makeshift gym for people since 1998. So now the digital platform launched in 2016, but it's never been about live classes.

What we do is we put programs that are structured over the course of, let's say, 80 days or 21 days, to provide a gateway for people to start a program on day one, and then they follow it. They just trigger the next workout, almost like a Netflix model more than a live model.

But what's interesting is we have these 340,000 what we call coaches, who are accountability partners. They put groups together that then follow these workouts together. They do them in Zoom groups, or they do them in Facebook Messenger chat pods. And they're basically holding each other accountable to both a fitness program and a new nutrition program at the same time.

So it's not a live model. But what it is, is a proven model over a specific period of time so that you know you're going to get results in the right sequence of workouts while you're stuck at home.

ADAM SHAPIRO: I am curious what-- you know, as people are signing up to do this, we're hearing health reports that one of the ways to protect your lungs is to do something that exerts and gets you to increase your lung capacity. Is part of your program designed to do that?

CARL DAIKELER: Well, you know what? That headline that you provided just before the break was-- is tough to hear. And for sure, the best way to preserve your health is healthy lifestyle choices. And that includes some measure of increased activity, and here's the good news, maybe a good headline on the other side of it.

Yesterday, we had more workouts streamed on Beachbody on-demand. Over 700,000 workouts were streamed. And that is over three times the number of workouts that were streamed on actually January 1st, the big New Year's resolution spike. So yes, a proper diet, an approach to fitness that's consistent, and just making sure that you're getting good nutrition, that's the best way to guard yourself from any sort of sickness.

And certainly at a time like this, you want to protect yourself. So it's important for people to find some way to be active, even if you're just going for a walk or a jog or something. Obviously, we'd love it if they plugged into a Beachbody on-demand workout, but do something to get your heart rate going, improve your respiration, and show your body you mean business about being healthy.

MELODY HAHM: Hey, Carl, Melody here. When you think about the winners and losers that we are trying to parse through-- and it feels uncomfortable, right, to think about this being an opportunity-- but in your case, you have been at the helm of Beachbody for two decades, right? So as you think about the ebbs and flows of your own business, when was the last time you saw this kind of surge or this sort of demand at home?

CARL DAIKELER: Well, the original premise of the business was to make the home as gratifying and effective a place to work out as a gym for people like me who either don't like working out or don't like the commute. But and certainly when P90x launched back in the late '90s or early 2000s, that was a spike that none of us expected to see so many people embrace extreme fitness.

The launch of Beachbody on-demand was also a huge rupture. It was brand new. And now we've built over-- we have over 73 different programs, 1.8 million subscribers. We added 275,000 new subscribers since March 15th. That's over 200% increase in the number of people that we're adding week over week over last year. So we've never seen a spike like this.

And look, the last way we want to grow as a company is due to a pandemic. That's not in our business plan. But I will say that it is really gratifying to have a business model that is prolific, that is proven to get people results, that does combine fitness.

And it's important right now-- healthy eating, portion control, and understanding that you got to drink your water, you got to eat your vegetables. We have nutrition programs so that people don't fall apart in the midst of all this anxiety and turbulence. So it really is gratifying to be at this place at this time with 340,000 coaches, who are helping people who would otherwise be wayward. They would let it all go, and they're holding people accountable.

So, you know, look, the real heroes right now are the first responders, the doctors, nurses, paramedics that are going in to the field and working. It's our job to stay at home. But I'm proud that our business can thrive at a time that we sort of here on the back line are helping people stay healthy at home when they're doing the right thing. And that is staying at home so that first responders can do their thing.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, we all need a little bit of activity to offset off all that bread also that everyone apparently is baking. Carl Daikeler is the Beachbody founder and CEO. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it.