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This is not the first time I was wearing good clothes and standing outside a nightclub, questioning my life choices and blinking.
Fortunately for everyone involved it was 4.30pm instead of 4.30am and I wasn’t from the club. My friends and I (everyone said, female) dance, drink and wave our hands in the air, like we don’t care. The task is completed.
But when the lights aired at 9pm we all left the club and had time to get to public transport. I was lying in bed at 10 pm. This is a daytime club. This is a revelation, I am a convert.
The daytime clubs and clubs known as “light” clubs (end of midnight) offer rare bright spots for rare highlights, otherwise bars and clubs in the UK are a bleak environment. According to the Night Industry Association, the total value-added of the night economy, a measure of productivity, is £43.3 billion in 2023, compared with a high price of £47.5 billion in 2019.
The reasons for club declines since the pandemic have been well rehearsed and accelerated: squeezed consumer finances; higher costs and stricter venue regulations; and, most interestingly, a “atmosphere” like kids. The hygienic young people don’t seem to want to forget that the world is burning by listening to a series of electric beats in a series of electric warehouses in a room full of drunken strangers. No, I don’t know what happened to them.
The consequences are shocking. According to CGA Nielsen’s NTIA Quarterly Seasonal Economic Tracker, the number of nightclubs in the UK started from 1,240 in March 2020 to 835 by the end of 2024, to 835.
So it’s past, and it depends on Gen X (both those born between 1965 and 1980 between 1965 and 1980, none of them are Boomer and Millennials – working in nameless work and saving clubs. Will our sacrifices never end?
“What we’re seeing is that the younger 18-30 people want an immersive club experience,” said Michael Kill, who leads the NTIA. “The older people only want this feeling-good experience and collective participation in the dance.”
Of course, this back-to-back method can be much cheaper. “really [older] Clubber is supporting age groups that may not have that much money in their pockets. ” he added.
The problem is that hedonistic ideals are to kill what is diplomatically called “the picky club” that collide with the reality of the generation of “sandwiches” with kids/old relatives/pets/high stress work/mortgage. I think this was once called “middle-aged”. And it’s hard to be free from hangovers, lack of sleep and the regret that traditional clubs tend to produce until the early hours of the morning.
For the venue itself, the daytime club is perfectly reasonable: it uses large buildings that play during the day. Therefore, in order to save the night economy, the promoters have just turned to do the same during the day. Simple. My learned colleagues in the FT Economics team will be effective sweating on idle assets.
Traditional clubs used about 13% of the license hours. Kill explains that it can now reach up to 30%. “There is an understanding that you have to pay to make up for the increase in costs,” he said.
Clubs during the day are as diverse as clubs at night. There are some unabashed cheese festivals, like the kind of fun I experienced called sinfulness. Then there is the underground carnival. There are also some more refined events, including big-name DJs like Annie Mac before midnight. But all of this is different from clubs (also confused, open in the sun), which hosted a “family carnival” that caters to parents with their children. Of course, these have their own positions. But it is obvious to state that they also have children.
My hard coverage on the frontline gave me some important tips when I was at the day club. You can thank me later.
First: tilt, hard. It’s not the time to be too cool with school. Sequins, theme assembly, leather chips (or, actually, all three together) are perfectly suitable. You will browse the second time inside the club, although I can’t guarantee a drive into the street in the afternoon. Second: The intensity of the numbers. These are definitely not events in solo tours. Third: Go early. If you leave it for a while, you think it’s better for the club because it’s too late for a person to order gin and tonics in a polite society. It would be foolish to chase from this disadvantage that the dance floor would be knocked down with the already drunk middle-aged man. I would recommend you to the above children/elderly relatives/pets/high stress jobs/mortgage rituals that are still in the morning.
But a few hours later, the daytime club provided some respite for all of this. Why go home if you are old? Now you can strode home – all before 10 pm.
Email Caroline AT caroline.binham@ft.com
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