Mad Dogg Athletics

Mad Dogg Athletics, Inc. markets bikes, men’s and women’s apparel, shoes, accessories, music, videos, heart rate monitors, and functional training equipment online. It also provides training services.

History
Mad Dogg Athletics is based in Venice, California and was founded by Johnny G and John Baudhuin in 1994. Mad Dogg Athletics claims to have over 150,000 authorized SPINNING instructors and over 35,000 authorized facilities in over 80 countries worldwide. Although the authoritative official database of licensed instructors and centers lists only slightly over 11,000 instructors (9,080 in USA and 2,105 outside USA) and over 4,200 fitness facilities and studios in 67 countries (2,971 in USA and 1,289 outside USA).

Trademarks
Mad Dogg Athletics owns the trademarks "Spin", "Spinner", and "Spinning" and family of related trademarks for indoor cycling exercise programs and exercise equipment in over 80 countries. Mad Dogg Athletics also works closely with Star Trac, who is the licensed distributor of its commercial line of Spinner stationary bicycles.

The trademark "Spinning & Fitness" was officially cancelled on Feb. 11, 2014 after Czech company Aerospinning Master Franchising Ltd. filled petition for cancellation with Czech trademark office. The trademark "SPINNING" is currently cancellation pending due to similar petition by the same company.

Indoor Cycling Creators
Mad Dogg Athletics, Inc. tried to establish itself as "creators of indoor cycling" despite well known and documented history of indoor cycling reaching some 100 years before the company itself was founded. The claim was later removed from their official website but the marketing story was accepted by many news sites.

"Spinning" coined by Johnny G
The company boldly claims that the word "Spinning" was coined by Johnny G and Mad Dogg Athletics, Inc., and is an arbitrary word they created for their stationary bicycle exercise program. Countless list of historic examples where the word "spinning" is used in connection to both indoor and outdoor cycling proves otherwise

Genericized Trademarks
Mad Dogg Athletics is gaining a reputation for trying to aggressively enforce their trademarks around the globe despite many doubts  about validity of their word trademark "spinning" which is considered as a generic word for indoor cycling in some parts of the world. For example in Mad Dogg Athletics, Inc. versus Batavus B.V. rulling the court agrees with Batavus, a Dutch bicycle manufacturer: Mad Dogg’s trademarks have become generic, however, Mad Dogg is not to blame for this. The trademarks are therefore not being cancelled.

Official Numbers
There are some discrepancies in the official numbers of licensed Spinning centers and instructors - for example as of January 2014 the official number of Spinning centers in Czech Republic is 204, while there are only 41 licensed instructors in the country of which only few have state-issued trade license required for fitness instructors in Czech Republic.

As of January 2014 many countries with licensed centers do not have any licensed instructors (Finlad, Guam, Oman, Bahamas, ...) and vice versa many countries with licensed instructors do not have any licensed centers (Israel, Malta, Namibia, Saint Lucia, ...). Out of 82 countries that Mad Dogg Athletics, Inc. claims presence in at least 22 have not either any licensed centers or licensed instructors. Other 13 countries (China, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia,...) have only one licensed facility or only one licensed instructor.