An in-depth look at the challenges facing BJJ academies in 2025
Walk into most Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gyms today, and you might notice something different from a few years ago: fewer unfamiliar faces on the mats. Across the United States and beyond, gym owners and longtime practitioners are observing a troubling trend—new student enrollment is down, sometimes dramatically so. What was once a steady stream of curious beginners eager to learn the gentle art has slowed to a trickle at many academies.
This isn’t just anecdotal observation. From the Bay Area to the Southeast, from Canada to Europe, the story is remarkably consistent: BJJ gyms are struggling to attract and retain new students. The question on everyone’s mind is simple but pressing—why?
The Economic Reality: When Hobbies Become Luxuries
The elephant on the mat is impossible to ignore: the economy. For most people, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu isn’t a necessity—it’s discretionary spending, and when household budgets tighten, discretionary spending is the first casualty.
Monthly membership fees for BJJ typically range from $150 to $300 in the United States, with some urban gyms charging even more. In major cities, rates exceeding $225 are common, and some academies have pushed past the $400 mark. When you’re weighing that cost against rising prices for groceries, housing, transportation, and utilities, the math becomes painfully clear.
As one practitioner put it bluntly, it’s hard to justify spending $150-$300 on BJJ when basic groceries like milk, eggs, and bread alone cost close to $20. The reality is stark: with average new car prices hovering around $50,000 and median home prices at $400,000, families are making difficult choices about where their money goes.
The impact is visible across demographics. Children’s classes, once reliably packed with 20 or more students, have dwindled to 8-10 in many locations. Some instructors report kids’ programs that used to host 10-12 children consistently now struggle to maintain 2-3 regular attendees. Adult beginner classes that averaged 15 students now see half that number.
The Post-COVID Bubble Has Burst
Many in the BJJ community believe the sport experienced an unusual peak following the COVID-19 pandemic. After months or years of lockdowns and restrictions, people had pent-up energy, savings, and a desperate need to get out of their homes. Sports and recreational activities across the board saw explosive growth—BJJ was no exception.
Practitioners who started training in mid-2021, as restrictions loosened, recall meeting brand new white belts seemingly every week. The energy was electric, the mats were crowded, and the future looked bright. But that surge appears to have been temporary. Those who join now report seeing more blue belts than white belts, and new trial students are increasingly rare.
Golf experienced a similar phenomenon—near logarithmic growth during and immediately after COVID. But boom periods don’t last forever, and what goes up must eventually normalize. The question for BJJ gym owners is whether they’re facing a temporary correction or a more permanent shift.
Market Saturation: Too Many Gyms Chasing Too Few Students
Another significant factor in declining enrollment is simple oversaturation. The number of BJJ academies has exploded in recent years, with some practitioners joking that you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting three BJJ gyms and two more with “opening soon” signs.
This proliferation isn’t limited to the United States. In Southeast Asia, instructors note that seemingly every time someone earns a purple belt, they hustle off to start their own gym. While entrepreneurial spirit is admirable, it fragments the student base and makes it harder for any single academy to build sustainable enrollment.
The mathematics are unforgiving: if the number of people interested in training BJJ remains relatively constant while the number of available gyms doubles, each gym must compete for a smaller slice of the pie. Some established gym owners report having five or more BJJ academies between their home and their school—academies that didn’t exist five years ago.
The barriers to entry for opening a gym have also lowered. In some cases, brown belts or even ambitious purple belts are opening their doors, hoping to generate passive income by having lower-ranked students teach classes while they nurse perpetual injuries. This creates a crowded marketplace where quality varies widely, and students have more choices than ever before.
The International Perspective: It’s Not Just an American Problem
While BJJ memberships are particularly expensive in the United States, the enrollment problem isn’t uniquely American. European gym owners report similar struggles, with both class sizes and competition attendance notably down compared to previous years.
The economic challenges vary by region, but the underlying pattern is consistent. In Poland, for example, monthly gym memberships typically run under $50—significantly cheaper than American rates—yet gyms there are also experiencing difficulties. Canada, where practitioners earn less than their American counterparts while paying higher taxes and facing Trump-era tariff pressures, is seeing particularly acute problems.
This international dimension suggests that while the severity of economic pressure differs by location, the fundamental issue—BJJ as a luxury good vulnerable to economic downturns—transcends borders.
The Awareness Problem: Everyone Who Was Interested Has Already Tried It
There’s another, more subtle factor at play: BJJ is no longer novel. A decade ago, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was still relatively unknown outside dedicated martial arts circles. The sport benefited from curiosity and the allure of the unfamiliar.
Today, thanks to the UFC, mainstream media coverage, and events like the Craig Jones Invitational, BJJ and MMA are well-established in the popular consciousness. This visibility is a double-edged sword. While it’s good for the sport’s legitimacy, it also means that most people who were ever going to be interested in BJJ have already tried it—and either stuck around or moved on.
The pool of genuinely curious newcomers who’ve never heard of the sport is shrinking. What remains is a smaller group of potential students who need more convincing or who are waiting for the right circumstances (financial, temporal, or otherwise) to begin training.
The Marketing Challenge: When Google Ads Stop Working
Even the mechanics of attracting students have changed. Gym owners who previously relied on Google Ads as a consistent lead generator report that the strategy has stopped producing results over the past six months. ( We can fix that – this is mainly due to inexperience with complex google ad’s, and quite frankly, Facebook ADs work far better. ).
The culprit appears to be artificial intelligence. With more than half of Google search queries now ending at the AI summary without users clicking through to actual websites, traditional SEO and online advertising strategies are losing effectiveness. Gym owners are being forced to reconsider their entire approach to digital marketing.
Some forward-thinking academy operators are exploring optimization for AI visibility—ensuring their gyms appear in ChatGPT results and other large language model outputs. This requires understanding how AI systems are trained (they prioritize content from trusted sources like Wikipedia and highly upvoted Reddit posts) and structuring website content accordingly.
But these are uncharted waters, and many gym owners lack the technical expertise or resources to navigate this new landscape effectively.
Not All Doom and Gloom: The Exceptions
It’s important to note that the enrollment crisis isn’t universal. Some gyms report they’ve never been busier, with packed mats and robust kids’ programs. One gym owner reported 41 new sign-ups in a single month—extraordinary numbers by any measure.
The difference often comes down to location and demographics. Gyms in more affluent areas appear to be holding strong, while those in economically disadvantaged areas struggle noticeably. This suggests that while BJJ faces headwinds generally, a well-positioned academy with the right student base can still thrive.
Interestingly, some alternative grappling programs are doing well despite the broader trend. Youth wrestling clubs, for example, often maintain high enrollment—sometimes 50-70 athletes per practice—thanks to dramatically lower costs. At roughly $300 for an entire season compared to $150 per month for BJJ, wrestling provides a much more accessible entry point to grappling.
Seasonal Fluctuations vs. Long-Term Trends
Experienced instructors caution against reading too much into short-term enrollment dips. BJJ has always experienced peaks and valleys, they argue. Attendance naturally fluctuates with seasons—people skip class during holidays, summer vacations, cold and flu season, and the back-to-school period.
Veterans of the sport note that if you’re not in a year-round sunny climate, late fall and early winter have always been slow seasons for enrollment. People are savoring the last warm days, busy with holiday preparations, or dealing with seasonal illnesses. Come January, the New Year’s resolution crowd typically floods back in, at least temporarily.
The challenge is distinguishing between normal cyclical variation and genuine long-term decline. Are gyms experiencing a seasonal lull that will correct itself, or are they witnessing the beginning of a prolonged downturn?
The Retention Challenge: It’s Not Just About Attracting Students
Attracting new students is only half the battle. BJJ has always had a notorious attrition rate—trial students who seem excited during their first class and are never seen again, white belts who train for a few months and then disappear.
The running joke about the “easiest triangles of my life” from short-lived trial students reflects a deeper truth: BJJ is hard, both physically and mentally. The learning curve is steep, progress feels slow, and without a steady influx of other beginners, new students can feel overwhelmed rolling with more experienced practitioners.
White belts report that it’s difficult to gauge their own progress without other white belts to train with. When everyone on the mat is blue belt or higher, beginners may struggle to see improvement, leading to frustration and dropout.
What This Means for the Future of BJJ
So where does this leave Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a sport and a business? The outlook depends largely on economic conditions and how gym owners adapt to changing circumstances.
Some gyms are responding by holding rates steady—refusing to raise prices even after two or more years—recognizing that affordability is crucial for retention. Others are exploring alternative revenue streams or adjusting their business models.
The gyms most likely to survive are those that either serve affluent demographics less affected by economic pressures or those that find ways to reduce costs and pass those savings on to students. Location matters enormously—an academy in an economically depressed area faces far steeper challenges than one in a wealthy suburb.
There’s also a natural selection process underway. The gyms that opened opportunistically during the post-COVID boom, particularly those with thin margins and inexperienced ownership, are likely to close. This consolidation might actually be healthy for the sport long-term, preserving high-quality academies while clearing out unsustainable operations.
The Bottom Line
The challenges facing BJJ gyms in attracting new students are real and multifaceted. Economic pressure is clearly the dominant factor—when discretionary income shrinks, expensive hobbies suffer. But market saturation, changing cultural perceptions, the post-COVID normalization, and evolving marketing landscapes all contribute to the perfect storm many gym owners are experiencing.
For practitioners who love the sport, this trend is concerning. Smaller classes mean less diversity in training partners, fewer perspectives, and less energy on the mats. For gym owners, declining enrollment threatens livelihoods and the survival of their academies.
Yet BJJ has weathered challenges before. The sport has grown from obscurity to mainstream recognition over the past few decades. It has survived economic downturns and adapted to changing circumstances. The gyms that remain will likely be those run by people who shift there focus from becoming world champion black belts, to world champion marketers. Gold medals don’t matter if no one is aware of them.
The current difficulties may ultimately prove temporary, or they may represent a permanent adjustment to a more modest, sustainable growth trajectory. Either way, the gentle art will endure, even if there are fewer beginners on the mats learning it. For those who stick around through these challenging times, the bonds formed and the skills developed will be all the more meaningful.
As one long-time practitioner noted, BJJ will always be cool to certain populations and worth the investment—even if that population proves smaller than the post-COVID boom years suggested.
