"No contract." "$0 enrollment." "First week free." "Cancel anytime." These are the lines that sell gym memberships, and they're the lines a gym is most likely to get in trouble for. Not because they're forbidden, but because each one is a promise about a contract, and most states that regulate gym memberships have written rules about exactly those promises.
This chapter isn't legal advice. It's a map of where the rules are, drawn from the statutes themselves, so you know which questions to take to a lawyer licensed in your state before an offer goes into an ad.
The FTC Sued a 600-Location Gym Chain Over How Hard It Was to Cancel
In August 2025, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company behind LA Fitness and several sister brands, which the FTC says operate more than 600 locations with over 3.7 million members. The complaint alleges that cancellation was often restricted to specific times or required speaking to specific managers, and an amended complaint in December 2025 alleges hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted recurring fees. These are allegations, not findings. The FTC's case page still listed the case as pending when we checked.
The federal backdrop is less settled than headlines suggest. The FTC's 2024 "click-to-cancel" rule was struck down by a federal appeals court, and the FTC formally removed it from the regulations in February 2026. It has started a new rulemaking, but only at the earliest stage. What does apply today, to any membership sold online, is a federal law called ROSCA. It requires the material terms to be clear before a customer enters payment details, the customer's express consent before charging, and a simple way to stop recurring charges.
So a membership sold from a Google Ads click through an online checkout carries federal duties, and most of the detail sits in state law.
"Cancel Anytime" Holds Up Only When Members Can Cancel the Way They Signed Up
The phrase itself is legal. The problem is when the cancel path doesn't match it. Several of the six states we reviewed now require that a member who signed up online can cancel online:
- California's automatic renewal law requires online cancellation for online sign-ups, and for contracts from July 1, 2025, limits retention offers to appearing alongside a direct cancel option.
- New York's gym law requires clubs to accept cancellations through several channels, including the website, and website sign-ups must be able to cancel on the website.
- Illinois requires that online sign-ups be able to cancel exclusively online.
- Massachusetts rules adopted in 2025 require a simple cancellation in the same medium the customer used to sign up.
New York and Massachusetts also make it a violation to misrepresent a member's cancellation rights. So "Cancel Anytime" in an ad for a gym whose cancel process is a certified letter, or a visit during manager hours, is exactly the gap regulators look at. If you can't cancel online, don't let the ad imply you can. Chapter 13 covered how to keep AI Max from writing it for you.
A "$10 a Month" Ad Has to Count the Enrollment Fee in Massachusetts
Low monthly prices are the most common gym offer, and they often sit next to fees that aren't in the headline: an enrollment fee, a startup fee, an annual fee. One chain's club page we checked in our example market listed a $15 monthly plan alongside a $59 startup fee and a $49 annual fee, all disclosed on the page.
Massachusetts has gone furthest here. Its 2025 regulations require the total price to be disclosed. The Attorney General's guidance doesn't give a gym example, but our reading of the rules is that when the first month carries a mandatory fee, the first month's total should include it and be the most prominent price. A "$10 a month" ad in Massachusetts with a required enrollment fee is exposed. Massachusetts law also separately bars misrepresenting pricing, discounts or offers.
Other states don't use the same wording, but the safe pattern works everywhere: if a fee is mandatory, it goes on the landing page next to the monthly price, in the same size. And "$0 Enrollment" is only an offer if the enrollment fee is really waived, not moved into an annual fee billed a month later.
A "Free Trial" Ad Needs a Landing Page That Says What the Trial Turns Into
Trials are the other big gym offer, and the rules center on what happens when the trial ends. California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts each require clear disclosure of what a free or discounted trial converts to, and how to cancel before being charged. Massachusetts goes as far as requiring the calendar dates.
The ad itself has limited room, so the landing page does the work. If the ad says "First Week Free," the page it lands on should say, near the sign-up button, what the membership costs after the week, when the first charge happens and how to cancel before it. A trial that quietly converts to a 12-month agreement is the kind of offer these laws were written for.
Several States Ban "Lifetime Membership." One Wants a Registration Number in the Ad.
Some rules reach specific words. Florida, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois bar or restrict lifetime memberships, and Florida's statute reaches wording that "may tend to give ... the impression" of an indefinite term. California and Texas cap contract terms at three years. So "Join for Life" or "Lifetime Rate Lock" copy runs into trouble in several states, and into term caps in others.
Texas requires a gym's registration or identification number in advertising in "any print or electronic medium." We read a Google text ad as an electronic ad, but we found no guidance on how that works in a 30-character headline, so a Texas gym should settle with counsel how the number appears, for example in a description line and on the landing page. Florida has a similar rule, but its wording covers printed advertisements. Texas also bans advertising a gym as bonded by the state.
Paid-in-full offers carry their own rules. Several states tie bonding, escrow or disclosure duties to how much a member pays up front and for how long. A "pay for the year and save" ad can create obligations the gym doesn't currently meet, so check before advertising it.
Six States, Six Rulebooks. Check Yours Before the Offer Goes Live.
We compared six states side by side: California, New York, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Massachusetts. Each has a gym-specific law, and most add a general automatic renewal law on top. They differ on almost everything: cooling-off periods from three to five business days (longer in California for big contracts), contract caps from one year to three, bonds or registration in some states and not others, and different lists of reasons a member can cancel, such as death, disability or moving away. Many other states have their own versions, and some are changing year to year.
Nobody running a gym needs to memorize them. What works is a short check before any offer goes into an ad:
- Is the offer true for every plan the ad could appear next to?
- Does the monthly price on the landing page sit next to every mandatory fee?
- If there's a trial, does the page say what it becomes, when the first charge happens and how to cancel?
- Does the cancel path match how members sign up?
- Is there any lifetime or "state bonded" wording, or a deadline that isn't real?
- Does your state require a registration number in the ad?
Then take the answers, and your membership contract, to a lawyer licensed in your state once a year and whenever you launch a new offer. The cost of that hour is small next to the cost of an ad that makes a promise your contract doesn't keep.
Next: What the Before-and-After Photo Can Say
Chapter 16 closes the guide with the other claims gyms advertise: transformation photos, weight-loss results and testimonials, and where Google's ad policies and the FTC draw the lines. Chapter 14's training campaign is where many of those claims tend to show up. All sixteen chapters sit together on the Google Ads for Gyms guide home.
For gyms on our Google Ads management plans, every offer goes through that six-question check before it's written into an ad.
