Rainer Schaller

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Rainer Schaller
File:Rainer Schaller, 2018.jpg
Schaller in 2018
Born (1969-01-04)4 January 1969
Bamberg, Bavaria, West Germany
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Caribbean Sea near Limón, Costa Rica
Occupation Founder CEO of RSG Group GmbH
Partner(s) Christine Schikorsky
Children 2
Relatives Gerd Schaller (brother)

Rainer Schaller (4 January 1969 – 21 October 2022[1]) was a German entrepreneur. He was the Founder CEO of the RSG Group, which includes the McFit, John Reed and Gold's Gym fitness studios.[2] He hit headlines as a result of the disaster at the 2010 Love Parade in Duisburg, which he organized. On 21 October 2022, Schaller and his son Aaron died in a private plane crash in Costa Rica.[3][4]

Early life

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]

Business career

Retail

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]

Fitness industry

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, 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]

Love Parade

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]

Rainer Schaller

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]

Disappearance and death

On 21 October 2022, a Piaggio P.180 Avanti plane carrying Schaller, his partner[disputed ] Christine Schikorsky, their two children, the 66-year-old Swiss pilot and another German passenger crashed into the Caribbean Sea near Limón, Costa Rica, while on a flight from Palenque, Mexico. The bodies of one adult and one child were recovered, but not initially identified.[25][26] On November 4, the remains of the two bodies were identified as those of Schaller and his son.[1]

References

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  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 Lisa Nienhaus: Der Muskelmacher [The muscle maker]. (In German) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 January 2008.
  10. Saskia Littmann: Sein Geschäft geht weiter. Handelsblatt, 24 July 2012.
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  20. "Diese Love Parade war für mich das Schlimmste" (Lisa Nienhaus, interview with Rainer Schaller). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 February 2011.
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External links

  • Media related to Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. at Wikimedia Commons