Can judo classes ever become commercially viable?

Can judo classes ever become commercially viable like yoga and Pilates?

If you want to run a successful private dojo in Malaysia you would do well to look at how the Singaporeans do it. There are many private judo clubs there, and quite few which have several branches. All of them are run commercially without any sponsorship from a rich patron or support from the government.

Judo, as we all know, is not a very commercial sport. In a way it's like boxing (not kickboxing, which is very commercial but good ol' fashioned boxing, which is not). People who do amateur boxing do it out of pure passion and there's very little money in it. And so it is with judo too. That's why there are very few judo clubs that are commercially viable.

In the US, many judo clubs are housed in community centres where rent is subsidized and most judo coaches teach on a voluntary basis out of pure passion. I know one such instructor in the US who helps run a free judo club sponsored by the city council. There is no rent, no fees to pay and the instructor teaches for free. You'll find this kind of non-commercial approach to judo in many other places as well. I have a friend in Canada who tells me his judo club gets free rent (from their city council) and that's why their training fees are very low.

But that's not how it is in Singapore where everything is expensive, especially rent. So the clubs there charge quite a high rate for judo training. One Singaporean coach told me that the way to successfully charge more is to "upgrade" judo from being a working class sport done in grimy, dingy, hot and humid rooms to a lifestyle activity done in nicely furnished, air-conditioned premises.

My immediate thought was: "That's impossible to do in Malaysia. Nobody would pay high training fees to do judo, even if the club was nicely furnished and air-conditioned."

The thing is, judo is primarily taught as a competition sport in Malaysia. Those who are into sport judo, who want to train hard and fight hard, do not particularly care about having a nicely furbished, air-conditioned room to train in. They just want a place to train in that is ideally free of charge or  very low cost. That's the typical mindset of a judo player.

That's not going to change much. Judo players will not want to pay the kind of fees that fitness gyms charge (between RM200 to RM300 per month). People will pay those kind of rates for yoga, Pilates, gymnastic, dance and so on. But not for judo.

That might change if judo-related programs can be marketed as a lifestyle fitness activity. That means creating customized programs designed to promote strength, fitness and agility through judo-related movement and activities. Could it work? Perhaps. After all, who doesn't want to be strong, fit and agile, right?

This is not my personal insight or concept but one suggested to me by a fitness professional who thinks there could be demand for such classes. Not everyone likes the rough and tumble of sport judo. Not everyone likes to fight. But some might like the movement and techniques, and indeed the philosophy, of judo.

The importance of having such classes is that they would then make it possible to hold regular judo classes where the emphasis is on hard, competitive training, randori and shiai. In other words, if the commercial side of judo is successful it makes it possible to carry on with the less-commercial side of judo.

Will this work? We shall see. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.