Peloton is partnering with TikTok to create short-form workout classes and other content as the struggling digital fitness and equipment company attempts to rebrand.
As part of the partnership, TikTok will roll out a #TikTokFitness hub featuring a dedicated Peloton section with custom content created for the platform, the companies announced Thursday. Users will be able to watch a range of Peloton-powered content including live classes, shorter fitness clips, celebrity collaborations and videos from instructors.
“We collectively recognize the way people engage with fitness is constantly changing,” said Oli Snoddy, Peloton’s Vice President of Consumer Marketing, in the release. He said TikTok wants to expand its content “to new audiences, and in completely new ways.”
The Peloton hub on TikTok marks the first time the fitness company is producing social content for a partner outside its own channels, bringing together two pandemic-era darlings that saw explosive growth as the world stayed at home. Peloton’s stock price peaked in 2020 at more than $160 a share but fell dramatically to less than $5 at times since. Its shares were up about 9% after the news Thursday that they would be partnering with the social media app, home to 1 billion active users globally.
“There’s always been this sort of interconnectedness between Peloton and TikTok,” said Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor and social media expert at Syracuse University. “You are stuck at home, and what’s better at home than a stationary bike or a new social media platform to get you to do participatory dance moves?”
The collaboration comes just months on the heels of a major rebrand meant to frame Peloton beyond being a company that makes high-end, in-home fitness equipment such as spinning bikes, treadmills, rowing machines and subscriptions to fitness classes people can follow while using that equipment.
The company endured financial struggles and a series of public relations snafus. A 2019 ad caused backlash for seemingly peddling negative body image and privilege. Then a couple of popular TV offerings featured wealthy people on Peloton bikes encountering health problems. A Peloton-induced heart attack killed Carrie’s beloved Big in the “Sex and the City” reboot titled “And Just Like That…” Another heart attack nearly wiped out Mike “Wags” Wagner in “Billions.”
In January 2023, the company agreed to pay $19 million after the Consumer Product Safety Commission levied “one of the largest civil penalties in its history,” the agency said, following a recall of 125,000 unsafe Peloton treadmills.
The company announced a “new chapter” in May pushing a more inclusive brand identity with a wider range of fitness options, more free classes, tiered memberships and an emphasis away from biking.
Peloton was a pandemic superstar with its sleek at-home bikes and corresponding live, upbeat classes reminiscent of a trendy, in-person cycling class, soaring in 2020. But the company struggled to adjust in a post-covid world of reopened gyms and in-person classes. Customers started rejecting the high cost ($3,000 for a bike plus $49 monthly subscription) and the stock lost 76% of its value in 2021. As Peloton has fought to stay alive in the years since, it has seen memberships and revenue fall, executed rounds of lay-offs, shuttered stores and increased prices for equipment.
The fitness company lost 65,000 app subscribers last quarter. It reported a nearly $160 million net loss for the preceding three-month period.
“We have to make our revenues stop shrinking and start growing again,” Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy wrote in a staff memo last summer when announcing layoffs. “Cash is oxygen. Oxygen is life.”
Previously a CFO at Netflix, McCarthy joined Peloton in February 2022 to save the flailing business, with efforts including the rebrand, a rental-bike service and partnerships with entities including the NBA and WNBA, Lululemon, the University of Michigan and Liverpool Football Club.
