Talk:Bally Total Fitness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	Business and economics Portal This article is within the scope of the Business and Economics WikiProject.
Stub	rated as stub-Class on the assessment scale
???	This article has not yet received an importance rating on the assessment scale.

	Chicago Portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chicago, which aims to improve all articles related to Chicago.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

This article was nominated for deletion on 2005 November 17. The result of the discussion was keep. An archived record of this discussion can be found here.

[edit] NPOV tag

I am disputing the neutrality of this article because, as written, it does not seek to neutrally inform a person of various facts relating to the company, including its controversies. It states certain criticisms of the company without any context as to what the company's general operations are or the response to those criticisms. --Jules7484 04:05, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I have rewritten the article (it was also nominated for an AfD - not by me). Any thoughts on the neutrality of my rewrite? I have no real opinion about the company.. never been a customer or known anyone with a complaint... so any POV should be accidental. --W.marsh 23:11, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to W.marsh for improving this page. I still wonder about the notability of this company. According to [1] there are 26,000 health clubs in the US, which would mean that Bally represents only 1.5% of the market. WP doesn't have a page for 24HrFitness (or any other fitness club as far as I can see). It's also not really clear whether Bally's consumer complaints are much worse than average, or still a current issue. FRS 23:23, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, on further research, the parent company certainly seems big enough to be notable. It's a NYSE listed holding company with 22K employees. It's SEC filings say that it is the "largest commercial operator of fitness centers in North America in terms of revenues, number of members, and number and square footage of its facilities." [2] In 2003, it had revenue of nearly $1B. It's also involved in some sort of shareholder control lawsuit. FRS 23:42, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually there is an article for 24 Hour Fitness. I think some better organization is needed though... there isn't really a category for them, that I can find, so it's hard them. I think they're both notable, as well as any other similarly large gym chains... while the 4 million customers claim is a little suspect, the WP:CORP guideline (proposed) is that a company has 1 million customers, which is plausible. --W.marsh 23:55, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks to W.marsh for the more neutral writing of this article. While the article still is not very thorough (though definitely more so than when it was a POV piece with little information about the company itself), I think that the POV problems have basically been resolved. --Jules7484 01:11, 7 December 2005 (UTC)