World enews: Netflix will start streaming Nike Training Club classes next week

Netflix is taking a page from Peloton’s playbook. Starting December 30th, you’ll be able to stream classes from Nike Training Club on the platform. In total, Netflix subscribers will have access to 30 hours of content in multiple languages and exercises.

For the uninitiated, Nike Training Club is a popular fitness app where users can take strength, yoga, and high-intensity interval training led by Nike trainers. It’s geared toward improving your strength, endurance, and mobility across all fitness levels. While some classes require equipment, many don’t. It’s very much in the vein of Apple Fitness Plus or Peloton, albeit without any Nike-branded hardware.

According to Netflix, the episodes will be released in two batches. While the first arrives next week, the second will come sometime in 2023. The first batch includes 46 classes divided up into five curated sessions: Kickstart Fitness with the Basics, Two Weeks to a Stronger Core, Fall in Love with Vinyasa Yoga, HIT & Strength with Tara, and Feel-Good Fitness.

This is a savvy idea from Netflix. After all, who hasn’t gone to a gym where at least one person wasn’t watching a show on an iPad? The Netflix app is also integrated into several fitness machines, like treadmills and bikes. What this does is lure exercisers to stay within the Netflix app for all of their fitness needs.

A gym-goer could theoretically stream a Nike Training Club for a floor workout before switching to their favorite drama while pedaling away on a stationary bike — all within one app. But instead of having to shell out more of its own money to produce original fitness content, it can just use Nike’s. Netflix is using a similar strategy with gaming. While it’s started its own gaming studio, the company is also licensing previously released games like Asphalt Xtreme and Kentucky Route Zero.

While convenient, we’ll have to see whether this idea has staying power — which is probably why this is so strategically timed to take advantage of New Year’s resolutions. (Never mind that most of those resolutions peter out by February.) Then again, if Netflix is really leaning into its villain era as it lays down the hammer on password sharers, it could try prompting folks to stream a Nike Training Club class in the middle of a 12-hour TV binge.