The founders of the fitness tracking apps MapMyRun and MapMyRide bought back their company from Under Armour after 11 years on Friday. The full suite of MapMyFitness apps, which also includes MapMyWalk, will now fall under the Outside media umbrella.
Outside CEO Robin Thurston and VP of product Kevin Callahan founded MapMyFitness in 2007, and sold it to Under Armour for $150 million in 2013. Terms of last week’s deal are not publicly available. Outside was formed in 2021 as a combination of several outdoor sports companies including Outdoor Magazine.
Outside’s products currently have more than 20 million registered users and 830,000 paid subscribers, while MapMyFitness has more than 80 million registered users, and will bring Outside to “well over 1 million” paid subscribers, Thurston told Axios. Outside announced a social feature last week where users can connect with one another and post about their adventures.
“MapMyFitness’s connected fitness technology perfectly complements Outside’s leading mapping and tracking tools like GaiaGPS and Trailforks. Partners can leverage these tools to offer more seamless outdoor experiences for users across a wider range of activities. Outside will be building more shared services and shared infrastructure to jointly support all the mapping applications at scale.” Thurston tells Front Office Sports by email. He gave elevation service and map tile service, which helps maps zoom in and out, as examples of those shared services.
The acquisition will also boost the company’s membership program, Outside+, with premium content already available on MapMyFitness. Thurston told Axios the company expects to make a profit for the first time this year, aided by more than $100 million in top-line revenue.
Dennis Young contributed reporting to this story.
