Nightclubs are closing their doors earlier
On New Year’s Eve, the nightclub Watergate held a 35-hour dance party. The Watergate is in a concrete building on the River Spree in Berlin. It’s famous for its floor-to-ceiling windows, kaleidoscope ceiling, and all-night parties.
But the 2024 New Year’s Eve party was its last. The Watergate, which opened in 2002, is the latest victim of the clubsterben. That’s a German word that means “club death.”
Clubsterben is striking around the world, as nightclubs close their doors and all-night parties become less frequent.
The Financial Times, a newspaper in London, recently updated an analysis of late-night dance parties. The newspaper examined listings from the website Resident Advisor. It found that the number of nightclubs open past 3 a.m. has decreased in 12 out of 15 global cities it analyzed.
It’s not just fewer events; many venues are closing for good. Britain has a strong club culture. But a recent industry report said that 37 percent of Britain’s nightclubs have closed just since 2020. Melbourne, Australia, is a nightclub capital of the world. But there, over 100 clubs have closed in recent years; those that remain are less likely to be open all night.
So it’s true. From Barcelona to New York and Manchester to Melbourne, the party is ending earlier than ever before.
There are several factors driving this change. One is the pandemic hangover. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many cities implemented more restrictive licensing and more onerous regulation. London, for example, reduced the number of 24-hour licenses in the city. Some cities restricted the number of clubs that could be open in the same neighborhood, responding to residents’ concerns about noise and public safety.
Others increased regulation around security, requiring venues to install advanced surveillance systems and expensive digital ID checks. Some cities charge nightclubs extra fees to be open late. In Dublin, nightclubs have to pay over €400 per night to be open until 2:30 a.m.
So for some nightclubs, the hassle of being open late just isn’t worth it. Drink sales drop off in the early-morning hours, so those last few hours aren’t very profitable.
Nightclubs are also facing competition from day clubs. Several big cities have seen an increase in events that end early in the evening. “Matinee Social Club” in New York originally targeted clubgoers in their thirties but found a surprising number of partiers in their twenties were interested. A party called “Dayshift” is active in seven cities in the U.S. and Australia; it goes from 5:00 to 10:00 p.m. Its website says “Party all day. Bed by 11.”
But the biggest buzzkill of all? Young people today are just not into clubbing like previous generations were.
The idea of drinking a lot, dropping a lot of money on bottle service, taking party drugs, and staying out well past sunrise—well, that idea doesn’t appeal to the newer generation of young people. One commentator called Gen Z the “most sober” generation yet.
In the U.S., alcohol consumption among young people has been declining for twenty years. A recent survey found that only 62 percent of adults under the age of 35 say they ever drink. In Britain, surveys show the same thing. Young people increasingly say they don’t drink, and they’re waiting longer to try alcohol for the first time.
Party drugs are part of the nightclub culture. But illegal drug use is at historic lows in the United States, a trend likely to be true in other parts of the developed world.
Younger people are more educated about sleep, and they like to get their z’s. More young people say they get eight to nine hours of sleep per night. It’s hard to do that when you’re partying until six or eight in the morning.
Many people simply find that they don’t need to go to an all-night party for entertainment. Netflix and video games are cheap. Dating apps and social media let you connect with others during waking hours. There are better uses for $200 than to spend it on just one night. And hey, it’s nice to be awake and coherent on a Sunday morning, too.
Nightclubs won’t completely die out any time soon. But the industry needs to adapt, or else it will continue to shrink. A note on Watergate’s web site put it this way: “The days when Berlin was flooded with club-loving visitors are over.”
Jeff’s take
There are a few cities where late-night events are either holding steady or getting more popular. They are Madrid, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Paris, and Mexico City. The cities with the biggest decrease in late-night events are New York, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and Manchester, England.
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