Volta AI Sport & Fitness Lab

Your data
knows more
than your
reports show.

Member retention, program performance, facility utilization. The insights are in your systems already. AI can now surface what has been difficult to see and turn it into decisions your team can act on. We help recreation and sport facility leaders get there, built by people who have worked every role in the building.

Book a discovery call → See the numbers
28%
Average annual member churn
Most of it is preventable. AI can flag at-risk members 6 to 8 weeks before they cancel.
40%
Program capacity wasted
Programs running at 40% capacity next to others with waitlists. Your data knows why. You just cannot see it yet.
$5.8B
Canadian recreation and fitness industry revenue
Canada's fitness and recreational sports centres generated $5.8 billion in 2024. Most operators still run on spreadsheets and gut feel.
5x
Cost to acquire vs. retain a member
It costs five times more to acquire a new member than to keep an existing one. Yet most facilities invest heavily in marketing and almost nothing in retention intelligence.
The Numbers

These problems
are costing your
facility money
right now.

They are not new problems. But AI can now solve them in ways that were not possible two years ago. The difference is having someone who understands how a recreation centre actually operates from the inside.

01
28.6%
Annual member churn
The industry average across recreation and fitness facilities. For most, the majority of it is preventable if you catch the signal early enough. AI surfaces those signals 30 to 60 days before cancellation.
02
12+
Disconnected data systems
Membership platform, booking system, access control, program registration, facility maintenance. Your data lives in silos. Nobody has the time or tools to connect the dots across them.
03
40%
Average program under-utilization
Programs running at 40% capacity next to others with waitlists. The data to optimize scheduling, pricing, and instructor allocation already exists in your systems. It just needs someone to pull it together.
04
0
Internal AI or data capacity
Most recreation centres have an IT team that keeps the servers running. But no CTO, no data analyst, no one dedicated to turning operational data into decisions. That is exactly the gap we fill.
The Real Problem

AI consultants
have never
worked a day
in your facility.

AI is the enabler. But it only works when it is implemented by someone who understands what a recreation centre actually looks like from the inside. Every role. Every shift. Every challenge your team faces before the doors open in the morning.

What the vendors tell you
×
The AI is ready, just plug it in
×
Your staff will pick it up naturally
×
The data will speak for itself
×
You will be live in a few weeks
×
Trust the algorithm, it has been trained
What actually happens
✓
Your aquatics team dismisses the output because the recommendations do not reflect how pool scheduling actually works
✓
Your front desk ignores the tool because nobody explained how it fits into their actual workflow at 6am
✓
The data does not map to how your members actually behave because the model was never built for a recreation environment
✓
Six months later the tool sits unused while you are still paying the subscription
✓
The team that built the algorithm has never managed a multi-sport facility
Gym
Ops
Front desk, fitness
instructor, aquatics,
personal trainer
ATP
Tour
High performance
S&C coach
6
Co-founded and managed
fitness facilities and
functional equipment brand
250+
Key account management
and enterprise sales,
LF, Precor, Eleiko
CEO
Multi-sport rec
centre, built from scratch
MBA
Entrepreneurship
& Leadership
100s
Founders supported
at Volta
The Team

Deep industry
experience meets
real AI
capability.

We have both been living AI for the past four years. Jaco brings almost two decades of deep domain expertise across sport and fitness. Matt brings 25 years of product and technology capability. Together we bring those two worlds into one room to help facility leaders adopt AI in a way that is not intimidating, is relevant to their operations, and actually moves the needle. Our goal is that your team owns the process. So when we are no longer involved, they can continue to build on what we started together.

Jaco Burger, Chief Innovation Officer, Volta
Almost Two Decades
Inside This Industry
  • Started on reception desks, opening and closing gyms and aquatic centres, managing multi-sport facilities
  • Personal Trainer, then High-Performance Sport Scientist on the ATP tennis tour for nearly 10 years
  • Co-founded 6 boutique fitness facilities and an equipment company across Southern Africa
  • Premium equipment sales for Precor, Life Fitness, and Eleiko, working with enterprise operators managing 250+ facilities
  • Founding CEO of a multi-sport, recreation, fitness, and aquatics centre, built from scratch
  • MBA in Entrepreneurship and Leadership from Stellenbosch University Business School
  • Two years in venture commercialization, then Chief Innovation Officer at Volta for four years
  • Supported hundreds of founders through Volta's innovation framework
Matt Cooper, CEO, Volta
25+ Years Building
Products That Ship
  • Co-founded and built Swept from idea to venture-backed SaaS, leading product from day one
  • Led product and marketing across multiple venture-backed startups, from early stage through scale
  • No translators between strategy and build. Matt has the technical depth to go from whiteboard to working product
  • Alumni of 500 Startups and Propel Accelerator. Associate Mentor at Creative Destruction Lab (CDL-Atlantic)
  • As CEO of Volta, has worked hands-on with hundreds of founders on product-market fit, customer validation, and AI integration
  • Built Volta's gate-based validation framework, the same methodology that sits underneath every AI Sport and Fitness Lab engagement
4 Years Deep in AI
We are both senior executive leaders at Volta. The AI Sport and Fitness Lab is an extension of our role, doubling down on industry specific AI adoption. We have spent the last four years inside AI commercialization, not adjacent to it. Building with it, coaching founders through it, learning exactly where adoption succeeds and where it fails. That framework now powers every engagement we run.
How We Work

Start with
a conversation.
Build from
what we find.

Every facility is different. We start with a 30 minute discovery call to understand your operation, your data, and your challenges. From there, we figure out together what makes sense.

01
Discovery Call
A 30 minute conversation where we learn about your facility and you learn about what AI can actually do for recreation operations. No cost, no obligation. We will be honest about whether we can help.
02
AI Adoption Sprint
A focused engagement where we pick one high impact problem together, whether that is member retention, program optimization, or operational visibility, and take it from assessment to live implementation. Clear scope, clear timeline, measurable outcome.
03
Ongoing Partnership
Ongoing AI adoption guidance. Strategy, tool selection, implementation support, and staff enablement. We work alongside your team to build your internal capacity over time. Our goal is to make your team self-sufficient, not dependent on us.
04
Outcome-Based Model
Where the ROI is measurable, such as retention improvement or revenue uplift, a portion of our fee is tied to what actually happens. We agree the baseline upfront. We win when you win.
Let's Talk

Tell us what is
happening in
your facility.

One 30 minute conversation. You bring your challenges. We will share what we are seeing work across recreation and sport facilities in Alberta and BC. Together we will figure out if there is something worth exploring further.

Book a 30 minute call →