How do you financially justify 24,000 sq ft MMA gym

If people are willing to pay for a membership, what's the problem?

Here is an interesting thing I've noticed about membership fees with new students over the years. The average person looking to get started will use membership price as a way to gauge how good the school and instructor are.

For example if one BJJ school in town is charging $60.00 per month and the other is charging $110.00 per month, your average Joe will just assume the $110.00 gym must be better a school with a better instructor.

The perception will always be; the more expense the gym/school the better it must be.

I have to say the BJJ gym I worked out at in Denver was 140-170$ a month (and all the schools are overrun with people, its all based on names and results.  Gym is known as holding some of the best grapplers in the state, or thats what it seemed like).  The MMA gyms I've looked at stay around 50-80$ a month.  Not sure what boxing or kickboxing prices are but given the cost of BJJ, this size gym would work if it had a good BJJ program.

They probably already had a large clientele and needed a bigger place.  They also showed that they have a pro shop which will also bring money, they have pro fighters and will get percentages of their purse, sponship etc. as well as the gym itself probably has sponsors.  Warehouses are generally cheaper per square foot than retail locations so their rent is probably cheaper than you might be thinking.

First this post tricked me  i thought it was going to be about a guy who bought a gym and his wife was pissed 

What i trip out on is all the big gyms in vegas, not that many people out there will pay 130-180 a month to train. Rent out there is crazy so Unless you just train fighters for big events and are making money as a manager or what i think is going on is people come in and pay a crazy amount for one personal class and over priced shirts,i dont see how they stay open.

I'm from around Ithaca. Word around here is that this is what Ryan spent most of the cash from his payout to release Jon jones. I also have talked to a few people who worked near the old bomb squad gym and they said that there was almost no one going in or out that they ever saw. My best guess is that Ryan was going to try and take a gamble with this place to see if he could turn a profit on a larger gym in central New York. It's a pretty cool idea to have a huge place and I've heard that a large part of there cash came from sponsors from the professional fighters. I think the game plan is to allow these fighters to teach classes between fights to increase revenue for the fight team and to start farming some new fighters. With any luck it should get more attention from the current fight team and bolster there ranks.