Back in 2005, the UK had a whopping 3,144 clubs dotted around its lovely earth. Places for people to go, drink, be merry, dance and go on the pull. But now? There’s only 1,733 of them.
This is according to the Association Of Licenced Music Retailers (ALMR) and Chief Executive Kate Nicholls told BBC Newsbeat that in some places: ‘they are gone for good and we're never going to get them back’
And this week it was revealed that nightclub entry fees have fallen into such decline that they've been removed completely from the Office Of National Statistic's annual basket of goods and services- reflecting what the nation is spending its collective money on.
Here are a few reasons why we don’t have so many clubs anymore.
1. Millennials don’t drink that much
For whatever reason, younger millennials (those under, like, 24) don’t drink as much as those just a little bit older than them. Meaning that one in four of them are basically teetotal. Which could explain the whole not-going-to-the-club thing…
2. Tinder’s taken us away from the club
Dating apps such as Tinder give young women like us the space to safely filter out and assess all of the people who might otherwise come up to us in the club and demand a ‘yes’ when they offer us a drink. With so many clubs still, sadly, letting sexual harassment go unchecked in their darkened corners or even their glitziest neon-lit dancefloors, it can be little wonder that women are in retreat from the club.
3. The whole health-food-fit-mad craze
Maybe we’re just getting older and boring and obsessed with oats and grains, or maybe everyone’s getting into healthy living. It sure could be a reason behind why clubs are in such short supply. Who goes for a run and an avocado smoothie the day after a row of jager shots?
4. The UK’s rental crisis
It’s not only young people who have to pay through the nose to get somewhere to live (thus eating into valuable clubbing money) but clubs too have to spend money on increasing rents, especially on expensive pieces of land that can be sold to private property developers…
5. House music’s everywhere anyway
You can listen to thumping beats on mainstream radio or on an advert for a kids’ TV show, so why the hell would you go to a sticky-floored club to listen to the same music?
6. We’re a lot more varied in our interests these days
The internet doesn’t only enable us in meeting people from home thus preventing our need to ‘go out on the pull’ but it’s helped otherwise underground subcultures to meet up. Really into death metal? You don’t have to go to a club for that, you can just meet online!
Instead of everyone swaying around a club until 3am in a bid to meet someone, anyone with the same niche interests as them, people can easily navigate our pluralistic customised list of interests with.
On top of that, big club nights can now be made even bigger and into once-or-twice-a-year occasions, or occasional smaller events which can be promoted easily online. Gone are the days of 'oh, we might as well go clubbing on Friday to that club we always go to every Friday' because nights move around different venues, some of them not even being actual clubs e.g. a warehouse or a carpark somewhere. And besides, so many of us are meeting over the special shared interest of street food we're too full up on £8 tacos to go clubbing.
7. You can't exactly do legal highs in a club
Not that we have, or haven't...or do. But basically, if your legal high of choice is a balloon, you can't exactly do it on the sly in a club. It's far easier to do over at someone's house, right?
Are there other reasons you can't be bothered to go clubbing? Tell us on Twitter @TheDebrief
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.