Enmotive announced today that they have acquired imATHLETE. This follows on the heels of Gatehouse acquiring Enmotive last year. Gatehouse Live also acquired Rugged Maniac in 2018. Gatehouse was a small division of New Media Investment Group, which owned 150+ newspapers nationwide. New Media acquired Gannett in 2019, which also owned over 150 newspapers including USAToday. The merged company took the Gannett name and stock symbol. Gannett has over $4 Billion in revenue and has a market valuation of over $800 Million. Gatehouse, which owns all of the races in addition to more than 300 other events represents less than 2% of revenue.
If you followed all of that, then it will be interesting to see how this most recent combination works out, specifically the priority that Gannett/NewMedia/Gatehouse/Rugged/Enmotive places on investing in Enmotive/imATHLETE. There is scant detail, although it appears that the “imATHLETE” the brand will continue – “The imATHLETE website, brand and staff will not only remain”, although there is not a clear indication on what the technology platform for the combined company will be.
Jeff Matlow, the CEO and Founder of IMAthlete says: “The resources and solutions we have now are far beyond the scope of any other organization. And what’s even more amazing about it, is that the industry doesn’t yet know our full power. I can’t wait to begin revealing to companies how much we can now positively impact their business.”
Of course, they have probably communicated with the Enmotive and IMAthlete customers how they intend to merge the technology platforms and migrate data and settings. It will be interesting to track this integration and migration journey.
As we continue to see in our bi-annual registration market analysis, there is a coming wave of consolidation. This will bring lots of change. It was clear from the data we track that IMAthlete had been in decline in terms of races listed on their calendar and website traffic. They have also lost a number of their high profile races still listed on their website.
Gannett has apparently agreed to cover future sales tax obligations of Enmotive, as they reported in October. Although it appears they are not collecting sales tax in states like Arizona yet.
RunSignup continues to be the stable, employee-owned company among of all of these changes and financial shakeups. We are sticking with our focus on technology for the endurance and nonprofit communities and skipping all the corporate drama. This will continue to be a long term advantage for our community of customers and employee-owners.