Under Armour to sell MyFitnessPal to investment firm Francisco Partners for $345M, after buying it in 2015 for $475M, and sunsetting Endomondo, bought for $85M
Global fitness giant Under Armour announced this morning that it will be selling MyFitnessPal to investment firm Francisco Partners …
Context & Ripple Effects
This sale closes out the fitness-app building spree Under Armour started five years earlier, when it launched its own tracking app off the back of the MapMyFitness platform and then paid $475M for MyFitnessPal and $85M for Endomondo. Adidas made the parallel bet the same summer with its $239M Runtastic acquisition, so the whole cohort of apparel brands that bought consumer fitness apps is now under the microscope.
The exit terms are the story: MyFitnessPal goes for $345M against a $475M entry price, and Endomondo — acquired alongside it — gets shut down entirely rather than sold. That turns the original thesis, that an apparel brand could own the data layer of its customers' workouts, into a measured write-down.
First-order effects
- Under Armour takes roughly a $130M loss on MyFitnessPal versus its 2015 purchase price and writes off Endomondo outright, ending its ownership of any consumer fitness tracking product.
- Francisco Partners picks up MyFitnessPal — an established consumer app with its existing user base — at a discount, betting a specialist investor can run a software asset better than an apparel company did.
Second-order effects
- Adidas faces the obvious comparison: its Runtastic bet either has to demonstrate returns Under Armour never got, or become the next divestiture in the category.
- Independent players like Munich-based Freeletics, which raised a $45M Series A for AI-tailored training plans while the brand-owned apps stagnated, gain credibility against both the corporate owners and the assets they're shedding.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the 2015-era strategy of apparel giants buying consumer fitness apps to lock in customer data collapses across the industry, and the category consolidates instead around dedicated fitness-software businesses — the path EGYM was still raising big rounds on as late as its $225M Series F.
- Private-equity buyers become the natural home for scaled consumer apps shed by strategic owners, resetting what these properties are worth relative to the peak acquisition prices of the mid-2010s.
The trend: Sports-apparel brands' mid-2010s acquisitions of consumer fitness apps are unwinding at a loss, with capital rotating toward standalone fitness-software companies.