Irish consumers spent more than €500m on fitness and wellbeing tech in 2022

Adults in the Republic spent an estimated €526 million in the past 12 months on fitness and wellbeing technologies including apps, wearables and online classes, according to a new survey by Pure Telecom.

Seventy-one per cent of the more than 1,000 adults polled by the broadband provider said they have used an online fitness tracking app in the past year, with the same proportion having used nutrition or food-tracking apps.

Mindfulness and mental health apps are also proving popular with 67 per cent of respondents indicating they have used one in the past 12 months. Consumers are also increasingly connected to wearable devices, with more than four in five indicating they owned or used such a device in the past year alone.

Overall the average adult said they spent €143 on online fitness and wellbeing in the past year, with men spending an average of €213 and compared with an average of €122 for women. Younger, Generation Z users outspent all other age cohorts, averaging €191 annually.

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When multiplied by the adult population of the Republic, according to the 2022 census, it means consumers spent an estimated €526 million on wellbeing apps last year.

“As the number and variety of wearable devices being produced by tech companies increases, so too will our reliance on the internet to achieve our fitness and wellbeing goals,” Pure Telecom chief executive Paul Connell said. “As such, we can expect the spending on online fitness resources to continue to rise as people seek that ease and flexibility that comes with doing things online.”

Published late last year, research from the Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit organisation, found that the global wellness industry generated $5.6 trillion (€5.2 trillion) in revenue in 2022, up from $3.7 trillion in 2013, and is expected to grow by a further 57 per cent to $8.5 trillion by 2027.

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