Mark Wahlberg Opens a $99 Longevity Gym to Undercut the $36,000 Crowd

Mark Wahlberg is opening a 32,000-square-foot gym outside Las Vegas in December that puts longevity diagnostics — blood work, epigenetic testing, cold plunges — within reach of people who can't pay $36,000 a year for the privilege. He's pitching Municipal Gym as the affordable answer to a wellness category where venture capital keeps chasing wealthy clients. Wahlberg told TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Thursday that the venture excites him more than anything in his career.

The price gap is the whole story. Fountain Life, co-founded by Tony Robbins, raised $18 million last year and charges $21,500 for a full annual subscription. The Estate, also co-founded by Robbins with hospitality executive Sam Nazarian, is planning $35,000 memberships. Equinox is taking sign-ups for a $36,000 longevity add-on stacked on top of a regular gym membership.

Wahlberg wants that same luxury tier, minus the price. "We have a better price point than our competitors, and we're going to get far more results," he said. For $99, members get three rounds of blood work plus an hour with a doctor to flag what they're predisposed to. Supplements and hormone therapy sit "right there" in the same building. Against a $21,500 Fountain Life subscription, that's roughly a 200x difference in annual outlay.

What does this change for gym-goers and the longevity market?

For practitioners and operators, the move signals that diagnostics-heavy wellness may finally be trickling downmarket — the same dynamic that hit personal training and boutique fitness a decade ago. Wahlberg calls it a "health and wellness ecosystem" with "everything there, soup to nuts," and admitted the gyms "kind of" double as storefronts for his supplements brand. The gym also gives customers a place to "actually feel and touch the clothes" from his Municipal apparel line, which launched during COVID — a timing choice he concedes "was not a good idea."

The expansion strategy is what he calls "aggressive." He wouldn't put a number on future locations, but said landlords and developers who toured the Las Vegas site have offered "AAA locations at very favorable terms, with great TI" — tenant-improvement allowances that subsidize the build-out. For a capital-intensive business like gyms, landlord money matters.

The F45 lesson

Wahlberg's fitness track record includes a real scar. He bought into F45, the 45-minute-class chain, in 2019 at a $450 million valuation. The company went public in 2021, then was delisted from the NYSE in 2023 after its stock collapsed. "I think the biggest takeaway was just making sure that I'm involved with people that share the same approach that I do," he said.

He also thinks F45's model was wrong for what he wants. Classes suit people short on time; he wants members lingering at Municipal for hours. Plenty of gyms run on a "join up but don't show up" model, he said. "I can't understand that philosophy." That's a bet on big-box economics — more time on-site means more spend on supplements, apparel and café protein muffins.

The name itself is deliberate. Wahlberg grew up poor in Boston, one of nine kids, on public courts. "You learn a lot on the blacktop," he said. "You learn to win, to lose, to compete, and hopefully to get back up and do it again." He frames the gyms the same way: "It's a place to work, but have fun and support each other and create community and really challenge people to be better versions of themselves."

At 55, his own goals have shifted from aesthetics to function. "I just want to feel good when I wake up in the morning," he said. "I want to be able to conquer all the things that I have planned for the day."

Whether a $99 tier can carry the cost of epigenetic testing and on-site doctors at scale is the open question — and the December Las Vegas opening will be the first real test of the math.