Rainer Schaller

Schaller grew up in Schlüsselfeld,^[5] West Germany near Bamberg. His mother and grandfather worked in retail there.^[6] The conductor and Anton Bruckner expert,^[7] Gerd Schaller, is his brother.^[8]

Schaller completed his training as a retail salesman in Schlüsselfeld.^[5] He supplemented this with further training to become a business and retail specialist. At the age of 22, he took over his first Edeka supermarket, and shortly afterwards three more in his home region.^[9]

In 1997, he switched to the fitness industry and opened his first studio under the McFit brand in Würzburg, Germany.^[9] He tapped into the discount segment of the market with this brand.^[10] By mid-2006, McFit was operating 62 fitness studios in Germany with a combined 400,000 members and 1,000 permanent employees.^[8] In 2011, McFit was considered the largest fitness studio operator in Europe, with more than 1 million members.^[11][12] Schaller gradually diversified his business to reach different target groups.^[13] In 2018, Schaller appointed Vito Scavo to oversee operational management of his holding company.^[14] In August 2019, the McFit Global Group holding company was renamed RSG Group and encompasses twelve fitness chains (including McFit, John Reed Fitness, High 5).^[15] In 2020, Schaller acquired Gold's Gym,^[16] which was in bankruptcy (Chapter 11 proceedings) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.^[17] By the end of 2020, Schaller's group of companies employed 41,000 people in 48 countries, managed 17 different brands and more than 1,000 studios.^[18]

In 2006, Schaller became managing director of Lopavent,^[19][8] which organized the Love Parade until 2010. The aim was to use the event to promote McFit's studios.^[9] The Love Parade went off without incident, under Schaller's direction, for three years.^{[20][better source needed]} In 2010, however, he came under fire^[21][22] for the Love Parade disaster in Duisburg, which left 21 people dead and 652 injured.^[23] Schaller testified as a witness in the court proceedings on the accident in 2018, accepted moral responsibility, but was not charged.^[24]

On 21 October 2022, a Piaggio P.180 Avanti plane carrying Schaller, his partner Christine Schikorsky, their two children, a 66-year-old Swiss pilot and another German passenger crashed into the Caribbean Sea on approach to Limón, Costa Rica, at the end of a flight from Palenque, Mexico. The bodies of Schaller and his son were recovered from the sea two days after the accident.^[25][26][1]

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