The whistlekick Report - August 2018, Enrollment

A few weeks ago I wrote about my desire to bring some data to martial arts school owners. I know how critical data and numbers are to every business, and I’ve found it frustrating that I can’t find simple, comprehensive data. You can read that last article here.

As I wrote that piece, whistlekick launched an initiative to correct the problem. We released our first public survey on the martial arts industry, focused on enrollment, for the dates of April through June 2018. That survey was open for the entire month of August 2018 and we recently finished collecting and interpreting the data. While we aren’t releasing the entirety of the results publicly, we will give you some tidbits.

Why aren’t we releasing everything? Because, we want you to fill out the survey – and the best way to do that is trade the results for your participation. This survey only covered the US, though we hope to expand it in the future.

How Many Students Does Your School Have?

43% of schools reported less than 50 students
29% had 50 to 100
21% had 100 to 200
7% had over 200

Honestly, I expected this. I travel as part of my role at whistlekick and I see the student numbers in person. While there are a ton of large schools, it’s easy to forget just how many martial arts schools there are. A small town may have more than one. I once lived in a town of 4500 people that had 3 martial arts schools. There are nearly 20,000 towns and cities in the US.

Other Findings from the Report

Schools reported a net-positive in enrollment.
Schools that paid for advertising all utilized online advertising, at least as part of their strategy.
Most martial arts schools have employees.
Just over 1/3 of schools (38%) operate out of a storefront.

Our next survey is based on competition and how your martial arts school approaches competition. You don’t have to be a school owner to receive the results. If you’d like to participate, click here.

If you’d like to learn more about The whistlekick Report, you can read about it on our website, here.