How much is a martial arts studio worth?

Short answer: a martial arts school is worth a simple product — active students × monthly tuition × how many months they stay. Everything else is commentary. No realized trade multiple exists in our data for martial arts, so this page runs on category data, labeled as such. The schools that sell well are the ones where students stay after the founder stops teaching every class. See Martial Arts Studios and the valuation calculator.

The number

No trade-specific realized multiple for martial arts appears in BizBuySell's trailing-five-year table, so we use category data only and say so. The size ladder from the IBBA Market Pulse, Q2 2026 is the frame for most small sales: 2.0× SDE under a $500,000 price, 2.8× at $500,000–$1M, 3.1× at $1M–$2M, then 4.8× EBITDA at $2–5M and 5.8× EBITDA at $5–50M. Size buys multiple because size usually means a team, systems, and less key-person risk.

For context only, large listed Recreation companies trade at 10.39× EV/EBITDA (Damodaran Online, January 2026). That is a proxy ceiling, not your price: public buyers get liquidity, audited books, and no owner behind the counter. Your buyer prices risk and opportunity cost at Main Street scale.

Worked example (assumptions labeled):

• Revenue: $360,000 — roughly 180 active students at about $165 a month.
• SDE margin: 32% — an assumption for an owner-taught school with one part-time instructor.
• SDE: $360,000 × 32% = $115,200.
• Multiple: 2.0× SDE (IBBA Market Pulse, Q2 2026, under-$500,000 price band).
• Math: $115,200 × 2.0 = $230,400.

A school with paid program directors, 12-month agreements billing cleanly, and camps filling summers can argue toward the next band. A school where the master's rank is the curriculum cannot.

How buyers actually value a martial arts studio

Buyers rebuild your school from three numbers: active students (billing and attending, not lifetime sign-ups), average revenue per student, and monthly attrition. A school losing 3–5% of students a month must enroll constantly just to stand still, and buyers price that treadmill. Then the trade-specific checks:

• Agreement structure — 12-month program agreements vs. month-to-month, who services the billing, and paid-in-full tuition still owed as classes.
• Who holds the students — the head instructor's rank, reputation, and whether assistant instructors run full programs families trust.
• Kids' pipeline — after-school pickup programs and summer camps are enrollment machines; buyers value the school relationships behind them.
• Testing and upgrade revenue — belt testing, leadership and weapons programs, and gear, as documented add-on revenue, not cash in a drawer.
• The mat lease — square footage is your factory floor; years remaining matter.

What raises the price — and what kills it

Raises it: attrition documented under ~3% a month; program directors who sell and renew without the owner; family memberships and sibling depth; camps and after-school contracts with local schools; clean billing with low failed-payment rates.

Kills it: the founder as sole instructor, tester, and salesperson; cheap two-tier pricing that forces constant enrollment to survive; heavy discounting and paid-in-full deals spent upfront; students loyal to a departing instructor; no written curriculum a new owner could actually run.

Move your number

Fix the billing first: failed drafts and expired cards quietly drain tuition every month; recovering them is pure SDE, and the Finix payments team can review your recurring setup. Systematize retention: attendance alerts, belt-progress check-ins, and renewal follow-up before agreements lapse — run by the ClaroPro team's operations systems, not by the head instructor's memory at 9pm. Document the program: curriculum, testing standards, and student progress records in a real system a buyer (and a new instructor) can step into — that is a Nova engineering team build, and it directly attacks the owner-dependence discount. Recheck: valuation calculator for martial arts studios.

This is an educational framework with shown math, not an appraisal; a real price is set by a real buyer on a specific day. Treat every caveat here as a shield for you, the owner: it keeps you from overpaying for a student count inflated by kids who quit in March, underselling a school with real retention, or signing a deal where the tuition was prepaid and already spent. We're on the side of the business owner — the caveats are how that side is defended.