Arkose Buys Block’Out: Climbing’s Big Game of Monopoly

It’s a strange kind of victory. On the day a French climbing gym chain takes the top spot worldwide, the new champion explains that it needs to get bigger because its gyms are bringing in less money. Thirty-five Arkose gyms, 12 Block’Out gyms, around €60 million in expected revenue in 2026: With Block’Out in the fold, Arkose is now a much larger operation. So all it takes to claim a world title is 47 gyms. That distinction may say as much about how fragmented the market is as it does about the new champion’s strength. Champagne? Let’s wait for better numbers. Behind the title is a struggling business model. The industry spent years worshiping growth, only to discover it might have no choice but to keep growing.

Growing to Stay Afloat

For a decade, climbing gyms were built on the assumption that if you put up walls, climbers would show up. Every opening got a triumphant press release; every funding round got a story about people building something together. Investors had found a young, urban, photogenic sport with a huge upside: They could sell memberships in the name of “community.” The number of gyms eventually became a measure of the sport’s health. We tallied square footage but less often asked how much those gyms cost, who benefited from them, or how long the market could keep absorbing new ones.

The numbers are starting to dampen that enthusiasm. In 2025, Union Sport & Cycle counted 1.9 million climbers in France, unchanged from 2024. Attendance at commercial gyms rose just 0.2%, while their revenue fell 5%. Gyms face inflation and rising operating costs, while recreation is an easy expense for households to cut. Add one fairly basic problem: In some metro areas, there are now too many gyms for the number of people willing to climb there regularly. Grégoire de Belmont even admits in a lengthy interview with PlanetGrimpe that some of Arkose’s gyms in the Paris region have lost 30% to 40% of their revenue over three years.

You can love commercial climbing gyms without getting excited about their financial strategies.

His case for the acquisition is, at least, easy to follow. A 40-person headquarters staff, he explains, can oversee 15 gyms or 50. Each gym’s profitability has fallen, so costs have to be spread across a bigger network. There’s nothing mysterious about economies of scale. But here’s the irony: The industry used to grow because business was good. Now it has to grow because business isn’t as good. After years of celebrating expansion, the industry is now being told to consolidate to cope with the consequences. That takes some nerve.

Arkose, incidentally, isn’t opening 12 additional gyms. It’s taking over 12 that already existed. The company can negotiate deals for climbing holds—the grips mounted on the walls—insurance, and marketing across a larger network. But each gym still has its own rent, energy bills, and staffing needs. The stock-swap acquisition doesn’t, by itself, bring new cash into the company: Block’Out’s former shareholder is taking a stake in Arkose. The deal could make the combined company stronger. But no merger, on its own, fills a gym its customers have abandoned.

Yet that’s the story the industry has been telling for years. A chain raises money, and the entire industry is supposed to applaud. A brand expands, and we celebrate making climbing more accessible. But you can love commercial climbing gyms without getting excited about their financial strategies. They have helped bring more people into the sport, created jobs and routines, and sometimes fostered real friendships. It would be bad news if they faltered. But a company’s size alone tells us little about whether climbers are better off. Nor does the number of buildings carrying its logo tell us how its employees are faring.

The Community Can Wait

Some things about this acquisition are already clear. Management says the Block’Out brand will disappear in less than a year. The gyms will adopt Arkose’s color-coded difficulty ratings, prices will be standardized by region, and the chains’ routesetting practices—the way climbs are designed and holds arranged—will be brought into closer alignment. But no decisions have been made about staffing or how work will be organized. Grégoire de Belmont says the discussions so far have focused mostly on the numbers and the structure of the deal. Management acknowledges that it has yet to speak with Block’Out’s staff. Aside from people they’ve seen around the gyms, the managers say they know three people at the company they just acquired.

There are reasons to keep the talks quiet. You don’t negotiate an acquisition in an open meeting between attempts on a red-rated boulder problem—a short climb done without ropes. But the order of priorities is hard to miss. The brand’s fate is sealed, shared policies are taking shape, and cost savings are under review. Talks with the people who will keep the combined company running haven’t even begun. At these “community spaces,” introductions can wait until the financial arrangements are finalized.

A recent dispute makes those concerns more than theoretical. On September 28, Arkose routesetters went on strike to protest the conversion of days set aside for tasks including maintenance into routesetting days, which they considered more physically demanding. In a statement posted on SNAPEC’s website, the strikers also denounced the failure to replace departing employees and stagnant wages despite inflation. Management says it has since opened talks. On October 17, employees at some of the company’s gyms also walked off the job, this time as part of a nationwide labor action. According to our reporting, they will do so again this coming Thursday, November 5. No job cuts have been announced at Block’Out at this point. But the promised “synergies” raise a simple question: Where will they be felt? In staffing at headquarters? In how fast routesetters are expected to work? The answers will tell us far more about the company’s future than its place in the rankings.

Above all, it’s too soon to sell this consolidation as a win for the sport without showing what it actually delivers.

Then there’s the word gym chains love: “community.” Anyone who spends time in these gyms knows it’s not just a slogan. You meet up after work, cheer on a stranger giving a climb one last try, and eventually get to know who sets the problems, who serves the coffee, and who closes up. You can’t build those connections in PowerPoint. They develop over time, through familiar faces and routines. There’s local history tied to a brand, too. Getting rid of it means more than changing the letters over the door.

Yet the community so prized in marketing campaigns has little say when decisions affect its future. Members can choose when to work out, but less often the rules staff work under, the prices they’ll pay, or how their gym will be changed. Arkose’s founders still control how the company is run, with investors also holding stakes in the business. That’s their right. But when you keep selling the promise of belonging, you eventually have to answer a question: Belonging to what, exactly, if you don’t get to decide anything? When it’s time to celebrate the sense of community, everyone’s family. When the decisions get serious, the family goes back to being customers.

We’re not asking Arkose to give up on profitability or put its investments to a weekly vote at the bouldering wall. Above all, it’s too soon to sell this consolidation as a win for the sport without showing what it actually delivers. Gyms that stay open, affordable prices, less grueling jobs, employees involved in the changes, and local character preserved: Those outcomes would deserve just as much attention as the world rankings. The proof will be in the gyms, one membership and one workday at a time.

The problem goes beyond Arkose. The industry has grown used to judging its success through investors’ eyes. The biggest brand, the largest network, the next franchise, the latest funding round. Eventually, we started mistaking industry metrics for the ambitions of a sport. To judge climbing’s progress, let’s look instead at who has access to gyms, who works there, and under what conditions. No world ranking will answer those questions.

Arkose just gained 12 gyms. What climbing gains remains to be seen.