In 2009, a gym company with a gift for making people laugh went bankrupt. Crunch had the name, the attitude and a reputation that reached beyond its locations. It also had a business that needed fixing. For the people behind New Evolution Ventures, the interesting question was how much of each belonged to the other. Could you repair the machinery without spoiling the joke?
- Operators with capital. NeV combined fitness investment with the work of running and developing clubs.
- Crunch was the test. A 2009 bankruptcy acquisition led to a franchise launch in 2010.
- Personality mattered. The team kept the brand’s appeal while changing how the business worked.
The joke survived the bankruptcy
Mark Mastrov, Jim Rowley and Mike Feeney founded the platform in 2008, initially as New Evolution Fitness Company. Mastrov had founded 24 Hour Fitness; Rowley had helped run it. They knew what a large gym operation demanded. With Crunch, they encountered something smaller, stranger and commercially interesting.
Angelo Gordon brought Mastrov and Rowley in to evaluate the troubled chain. In Rowley’s later account, its sales, marketing and operating processes needed rebuilding. The identity still worked. The practical distinction was crucial: the business could be failing even while the brand retained value.
The platform partnered with Angelo Gordon to buy Crunch out of bankruptcy. Contemporary reporting put the purchase price at approximately $40 million. Franchising followed in 2010. The intervention gave an expressive brand a system other operators could reproduce.
“without removing its sense of fun”
Jim Rowley, on the Crunch overhaul, 2024
That small phrase describes a surprisingly difficult acquisition skill. Standardize enough to make a business repeatable. Leave enough alone to give customers a reason to choose it.
A gym has two sets of customers
NeV sits between investment capital and the gym floor. Its business counterparts have included founders, experienced operators and financial partners. The people buying workouts, classes and training belong to another layer: the individual brands. Nobody needs to recognize NeV’s name to encounter its work.
Its documented offering spans acquisitions, brand development, operations management and expansion. Within the associated businesses, memberships and personal training produce consumer revenue; franchising allows local operators to build under an established name. NeV’s investment role adds an ownership interest in the businesses it helps develop.
The physical cost shows up in smaller decisions, too. In June 2012, Crunch acquired a former Gold’s Gym on West 54th Street in Manhattan. Its announcement described 25,000 square feet over three levels and $300,000 in planned renovations over the following 90 days. Even an existing club required a budget and a timetable to become part of the brand.
For a founder, the attraction is access to people who have already wrestled with the physical business: staffing, club layouts, sales routines and opening locations. Compared with raising money alone, that is a different proposition. The relevant comparison is what expertise arrives alongside the check.
The partner with the floor plan
The early company’s culture reflected that proximity. In a 2009 interview, Rowley described a creative business with little hierarchy and more room for family life. That is a founder’s account of a particular period, but it helps explain the appeal of returning to a smaller operation after managing a large chain.
Feeney supplies an instructive counterweight to the celebrity partnerships. A 2015 profile followed his responsibility for design and construction across NeV-associated brands, including Crunch and UFC Gym. Someone has to decide how the concept fits inside the building.
By 2024, he was discussing another problem: recovery. HydroMassage, compression boots and other amenities could expand what a club offered. They also introduced a charging problem. If customers buy different services, how does the operator control access?
Feeney’s advice was to limit complexity and think about monetization before spending on the buildout. A recovery area can look convincing in a brochure while becoming awkward to manage. The useful lesson travels beyond fitness: design the payment and access rules alongside the experience.
An audience is a head start
NeV also worked with brands that brought their own public. UFC GYM translated mixed martial arts into a fitness setting; its first flagship celebrated its grand opening in Concord in January 2010. Customers could encounter coached training and conventional gym facilities under a recognizable sporting identity.
Later that year, Madonna and her manager, Guy Oseary, announced Hard Candy Fitness with NeV. Mexico City was the first stop. The announcement described a 30,000-square-foot club. Music, design and exercise were being assembled around an audience that already understood the performer’s relationship with physical effort.
A different partnership arrived in 2012. With Vision Capital and brothers Kirk and John Galiani, NeV helped establish US Fitness around Mid-Atlantic clubs. Here, the advantage came from experienced regional operators and multiple club brands. There was more than one route into the same business.
The numbers belong to different chapters
By July 2019, when TPG Growth partnered with management to acquire Crunch, the network had more than 300 gyms and 1.3 million members. The transaction included corporate Signature clubs and the global franchise business. That was a substantial evolution from the bankruptcy acquisition ten years earlier.
Gyms worldwide. Company-owned and franchised. Growth spans several owners.
In April 2025, Crunch announced a majority investment from Leonard Green & Partners, buying from TPG Growth and minority shareholders. It reported more than 500 gyms and three million members. Those later numbers describe Crunch’s broader management and franchise network across successive owners. They cannot all be assigned to NeV.
Capital also came in different forms. Vision Capital invested in NeV in 2011. Separately, Golub Capital led a $330 million financing for Crunch in November 2024, including a $40 million revolver and a $290 million term loan. That facility was Crunch debt under TPG ownership. It was not NeV’s fundraising total.
The next bet still starts on the floor
In January 2026, Mastrov returned to 24 Hour Fitness as an owner and executive chair alongside LongRange Capital. That announcement identifies the acquiring partners; it does not identify NeV as the buyer. His subsequent podcast discussion returned to club condition, remodeling and culture.
For readers looking to copy something, begin with the diagnosis. Identify what customers already value. Repair the processes that prevent it from becoming a durable business. Test whether a second operator can deliver the same experience, with the same standards and a realistic budget for the location.
Those are interpretations of NeV’s history, not a guaranteed formula. They depend on real customer affection, workable locations and people who can execute. A recognizable name cannot rescue an unsuitable lease. Franchising cannot make poor economics disappear. Crunch’s story is useful because its personality survived the work required to make it repeatable.