Mark Wahlberg launches a 32,000-sq-ft diagnostic-heavy gym in Las Vegas for $99/month, positioning Municipal as an affordable alternative to $35K annual longevity clubs.
By Adam Makins·
Mark Wahlberg isn’t just another celebrity slapping his name on a gym. Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, the actor revealed that Municipal, his new 32,000-square-foot wellness facility opening in December outside Las Vegas, excites him more than anything else in his entire career.
And it shows. The club isn’t your typical iron paradise. It’s packed with blood work stations, epigenetic testing, recovery gear, compression therapy, cold plunges, and a cafe serving protein muffins. The pitch? Affordable diagnostics-heavy wellness for the masses, not just billionaires.
The longevity market has become a playground for venture capital, with premium wellness clubs commanding eye-watering fees. Fountain Life, co-founded by Tony Robbins, charges $21,500 annually. The Estate aims for $35,000 memberships. Equinox is launching a $36,000 longevity add-on for existing members.
Wahlberg is undercutting all of them. For $99, members get three rounds of blood work and an hour with a doctor to identify health predispositions. Supplements and hormone therapy are right there in the ecosystem.
“We have a better price point than our competitors, and we’re going to get far more results,” he said confidently. It’s a democratization play wrapped in luxury packaging, and it makes sense given what he learned from his previous gym venture.
Wahlberg’s last gym gamble provides cautionary context. He invested in F45, the 45-minute fitness class chain, when it was valued at $450 million. The company went public in 2021, then got delisted from the NYSE in 2023 after its stock collapsed spectacularly.
He didn’t shy away from discussing the failure. “The biggest takeaway was just making sure that I’m involved with people that share the same approach that I do,” he reflected. He also realized big box wasn’t his model. F45 targets time-strapped exercisers, but Wahlberg wants members camping out for hours. He even mocked the standard gym playbook: join up and never show up.
Municipal is the second act of a vision sketched seven years ago. Wahlberg launched a clothing brand called Municipal during COVID, a notoriously bad time to enter apparel. He admits it wasn’t smart, but it served a purpose.
As a fitness spokesperson, celebrities kept asking him to be a brand ambassador. They wanted him to sell t-shirts and sneakers. Instead, Wahlberg wanted impact across people’s entire lives: what they eat, what supplements they take, how they train, how they recover. Clothing was just the entry point.
Now he’s building “a health and wellness ecosystem with everything there, soup to nuts.” The gym doubles as a storefront for his supplement line. The apparel sells itself when members can actually wear and feel it during workouts. This is vertical integration for the wellness era.
The name “Municipal” isn’t arbitrary. Wahlberg grew up poor in Boston, one of nine kids, shooting hoops on public courts. “You learn a lot on the blacktop,” he explained. “You learn to win, to lose, to compete, and hopefully to get back up and do it again.”
He carries that public court mentality into Municipal. It’s meant to feel like community, not exclusivity. He was transformed by people who believed in him, including Father Jim Flavin, a Boston priest who’s guided him since age 13. At 55, his mission has evolved beyond personal achievement.
“I try to constantly remind myself that I can inspire other people growing up in similar situations, especially inner-city kids and at-risk youth, that there is a way to overcome your circumstances if you’re willing to go out there and do the work,” he said.
Wahlberg isn’t ruling out more ventures, though he’s currently juggling the gym, a film role as Pete Rose, and his daughter’s equestrian career. He called the growth strategy “aggressive,” revealing that landlords and developers have offered “AAA locations at very favorable terms” after touring the Las Vegas site.
Wahlberg’s pivot from celebrity fitness influencer to tech-forward wellness entrepreneur shows how legacy celebrities are building legitimate business ecosystems. He’s not licensing his name; he’s building infrastructure.
The real question isn’t whether Municipal will launch in December. It’s whether Wahlberg’s blacktop ethos can actually scale in a market designed for exclusivity.
Source: TechCrunch
