This morning, Peloton successfully set two new Guinness world records – even with the Peloton servers crashing for 20 minutes during one of the classes.
Update 2 – We have updated this article with the official record numbers from a statement from Guinness.
Update – Peloton CEO Barry McCarthy has issued an apology about the outage & server issues during the ride.
As reported last week, Peloton had the Guinness world record teams on hand, as they attempted to set two world records during the annual Turkey Burn classes on Thanksgiving. In addition, Peloton was awarding special PR badges for the day – and for those who were attempting to earn these PR badges, note they might take 48 hours to show up on your profile.
The common names for the record Peloton were trying to set were the largest live cycling class, and largest live running classes.
However, in the Guinness record books, they will show up as “Most viewers of a static cycling lesson live stream on a Bespoke platform” and “Most viewers of a running/jogging lesson live stream on a bespoke platform”.
The record for largest live running class was set during Alex Toussaint’s Turkey Burn Run, which was a 30 minute run that took place on November 23, 2023 @ 9:00am ET (on Thanksgiving). Alex confirmed at the end of class that the Guinness world record was officially set during this Peloton class.
The Peloton app showed over 13,562 people live during the class. Alex Toussaint later shared that Peloton had set the Guinness world record for largest running class with 13,562 – the same exact number the leaderboard had shown.
There were no issues reported during the run.
Unfortunately for Peloton, there were widespread system outages during the cycling class. We covered those in detail here. However, those appear to have been mostly resolved after around 20 minutes, and enough people were able to join for the second half of the class to set the record for cycling as well.
Robin Arzon confirmed at the end of the class Peloton had set the world record.
The record for largest live cycling class was thus set during Robin Arozn’s Turkey Burn Ride. This was a 45 minute ride that took place on November 23, 2023 @ 10:00am ET (also on Thanksgiving).
There was discrepancy between all the numbers in the cycling class. The Peloton app leaderboard reported more than 33,579 live during Robin’s class, while Barry McCarthy said in his apology letter there were around 37,000 people.
However, when Peloton released a video, the spokesman said that Peloton had set the world record for largest cycling class with 27,550 people – a much number lower than either of the two public ones seen. It is not clear at this time where the discrepancy comes from, since the running record number was so close to what was seen on the leaderboard.
The spokesperson also shared that the number they were needing to beat to earn the record was 23,000.
This is not the first time Peloton has set or held a Guinness world record for largest cycling class. Back in 2017, Peloton set the record for “largest online static cycling lesson”, with over 10,000 members. Note that at the time, the only riders who counted were those who “participated for at least 30 minutes”. It’s not clear what the minimum time requirement was for the class this year.
However, this year the official record title notes that is “viewers” of a class, so there might not be a minimum time requirement at all, instead just counting the peak number of people on the stream at once.
Note that although Peloton set the Guinness world records with these two classes this year – these are not Peloton records. Peloton set those records in 2020 and 2022 – which you can read about here. Last year, Alex Toussaint’s 2022 Turkey Burn run had more than 14,400 people take it live – nearly 1,000 more people than this year.
Last year’s Turkey Burn ride with Robin Arzon also had many more people. Last year saw 43,470 people taking it live, compared to the 33,579 this year – meaning there were nearly 10,000 more people who took the class last year.
2020’s Turkey Burn ride appears to be the overall record for a single Peloton class ever, with over 50,000 people taking it live.
However, the Guinness world record team has to be on hand to verify an official world record attempt. Since Peloton did not have Guinness on hand during 2020, 2021, or 2022 – so those Peloton records do not count towards the Guinness world records. Thus, this year’s Guinness world records are lower numbers than the overall all time records for Peloton classes.
Peloton had two other live Peloton Turkey Burn classes today as well, although they weren’t going for world records in these classes.
Matt Wilpers hosted a 20 min Turkey Burn Row, which took place on Thursday, November 23rd @ 8:00am ET. This rowing class had over 1,343 live members in it – easily a record for the largest rowing class Peloton has hosted ever. The Peloton Row has been out for just over a year, and only started allowing app members to take rowing classes earlier this year with the release of the new Peloton app tiers.
In addition, Denis Morton taught a 20 min Turkey Burn Yoga flow on Thursday, November 23rd @ 11:00am ET. This had over 3,650 members live.
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