Gold's Gym has filed for bankruptcy protection after closing locations amid coronavirus

• Gold's Gym filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
• The gym chain had temporarily closed locations amid the coronavirus pandemic. It later announced it would close 30 company-owned locations for good.
• "We want to be 100 percent clear that Gold's Gym is not going out of business," president and CEO Adam Zeitsiff said in a press release. "The brand is strong, and we'll continue to innovate and grow our digital business, our licensing program and our global footprint as we focus on serving our millions of members across the world."
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Gold's Gym filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, the latest business to pursue restructuring amid coronavirus-related business disruptions.

"We want to be 100 percent clear that Gold's Gym is not going out of business," president and CEO Adam Zeitsiff said in a press release. "The brand is strong, and we'll continue to innovate and grow our digital business, our licensing program and our global footprint as we focus on serving our millions of members across the world."

The company referenced difficulties brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and said it hoped to reemerge from bankruptcy proceedings by August 1.

It said the bankruptcy filing would affect only company-owned locations, which represent about 10% of the company's roughly 700 locations around the world.

The gym chain was forced to temporarily close locations across the US in March in response to states' restrictions on businesses. In April, it announced it would close 30 company-owned locations for good.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Zeitsiff outlined the company's plans to reopen gyms under new protocols including reduced capacity and enhanced cleaning procedures.

"We have been working with our landlords to ensure that the remaining company-owned gyms reopen stronger than ever coming out of this pandemic," the company said in a statement on Monday. "To be clear, the filing should not impact our licensing division, it is not associated with any of our locally-owned franchise gyms, nor will it prevent us from continuing to support our system of nearly 700 gyms around the world. While the COVID-19 pandemic certainly impacted our company-owned gym operations, we expect the filing will have no further impact on current operations."