Mark Wahlberg has started companies of his own and backed plenty of others. But the gym he’s opening in December, he says, has him more excited than anything he’s done in his entire career. It also goes after a corner of the market where venture money keeps flowing: pricey, diagnostics-heavy wellness.

Speaking with us at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Thursday, the actor said the first Municipal Gym opens in December. It’s a 32,000-square-foot club outside Las Vegas with blood work, epigenetic testing, recovery gear, compression therapy, cold plunges, and a café that serves up protein muffins, among other things. He’s pitching it as the affordable alternative to the longevity clubs that charge tens of thousands of dollars a year for much the same thing.

It’s the second part of a scheme that was, in some ways, first hatched seven years ago, with a casual sportswear line.

The clothing brand Municipal launched during COVID, which Wahlberg volunteers “was not a good idea.” (Clothing was a lousy business to enter in 2020, with retailers from J.Crew to Brooks Brothers going bankrupt.)

It grew out of what he’d been seeing as a celebrity fitness spokesperson. He’d done collabs with various brands, and other companies kept approaching him to be their brand ambassador, but they all seemed to want the same thing, he said. “Everybody just kind of wanted to sell T-shirts and sneakers.

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