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SoulCycle’s political fundraiser triggered a rapid loss of riders, analysis finds
ReSoulCycle’s political fundraiser triggered a rapid loss of riders, analysis finds
A new analysis argues that SoulCycle’s decline began not with Peloton or the pandemic, but with a 2019 political fundraiser that broke the brand’s promise of inclusion, causing a 7.5% weekly attendance drop and a 13% customer loss within a month.
SoulCycle’s steep decline was not primarily caused by Peloton, the pandemic, or the rise of Pilates, according to a new analysis of the fitness brand’s fall from grace. Instead, the pivotal moment came in 2019, when the company’s owner hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump. Riders who had built their identities around the brand’s message of inclusion did not just complain — they left in droves.
Weekly attendance dropped 7.5% within a week of the event, and the brand lost nearly 13% of its U.S. customer base the following month. The workout itself had not changed. What changed, the analysis argues, was the story the brand told about itself, which no longer matched what its core customers believed about themselves.
The analysis, published by columnist Emily Cody, points to SoulCycle’s original positioning as a self-transformation brand rather than a mere fitness studio. Its tagline — “Take your journey. Change your body. Find your soul.” — was never about the workout itself. When the company launched its first major ad campaign in 2017, then-CEO Melanie Whelan told Marketing Daily that the “Find It” campaign was designed to help riders “discover something, the thing that makes it meaningful to them,” whether that was strength, purpose, or clarity.
Co-founder Julie Rice later explained the appeal more bluntly: “People didn’t come to SoulCycle because they got fit. It was the connection they got in the room.” That connection was so powerful that a researcher at Harvard Divinity School who studied the brand found riders were bringing questions to their instructors that they once brought to pastors. SoulCycle, the analysis suggests, functioned less as a fitness brand and more as a belief system with a clip-in shoe requirement.
That intense loyalty, however, proved volatile. When the brand’s actions contradicted its inclusive self-image, the relationship broke quickly. The analysis contrasts this with slower market shifts: Pilates participation grew nearly 40% over the past five years, while cycling fitness dropped 33.5% in the same period, according to TheStreet’s coverage of SoulCycle’s recent outlet closures. Those numbers reflect a real change in consumer preferences, but they do not explain why a brand with a decade of devotion lost so much of its base in a matter of weeks, years before any studio closures made headlines.
“Markets shift slowly; identity collapses fast,” Cody writes. SoulCycle did not lose riders because people stopped wanting connection or stopped wanting to feel like the strongest version of themselves. It lost riders because, for a moment, its own behavior made that story impossible to believe. The Pilates numbers and the Peloton competition came later. The real fracture happened the moment the brand stopped being trustworthy to the people who had built their identity around it.
The analysis concludes with a warning for any identity-driven brand: the loyalty is real, but so is the exposure. When a company’s actions contradict the self-image it sells, the relationship does not bend — it breaks.
