An article caught my eye on BBC News yesterday which confirmed what I have suspected was the case for a long time; Half of nightclubs in the UK have closed in the last 10 years. I have written a piece before on the importance of knowing your clientele and reading the market if you are a public-facing business owner. So this obviously interested me as it’s a case study backed with evidence.
What I'm about to say relates only to the UK club scene, nowhere else in the world... Every country has a different nightlife culture and specifically a different nightclub scene.

As we know, residential interior design within your own space is entirely personal preference and individual taste but commercial interior design is the polar opposite. A different discipline entirely.
Commercial interior design, generally, is the recognition of what is currently popular or desirable among the 'majority' of your target clientele, meeting that demand while ideally maintaining your own identity (you’ll struggle to create a brand without that...)
This is where I think some club owners have fallen well short of the mark. They seem to work to a tested formula which was successful a long, long time ago in a different social and economic climate.

The reality is that, for most generic nightclubs, the format hasn't changed almost since the 80's yet the world has moved on. An array of spinning, neon and strobe lights, dry ice and mirror balls are the tried and tested fixtures of most standard nightclubs but it can seem a little passé by current tastes and many clubs have become retro without even knowing it. 
It's become a tired, stereotype cliché and club owners haven't protected their investment by taking educated creative risks, being proactive about a changing landscape. We possibly need to redefine what being a  'nightclub' means and what its place is. There is no reason why the definition can't and shouldn't change with time.

Don't get me wrong, there are many clubs, mainly in larger cities which do market themselves as being a style-driven lifestyle choice and they're extremely successful, mainly due to having what is effectively a ‘late night bar’ atmosphere. Not somewhere a group of friends would go on a fancy dress stag weekend (these sticky-floored, dry ice-filled establishments are undoubtedly the ones which have gone to the wall...)

The obvious change and biggest nail in the coffin for most clubs which they didn’t react to was introduction of licensing hours in 2005, a decade ago... Coincidence? Of course not. 
It used to be the case that when the pub/bar closed, you went to a club and there was no option. Bars however are no longer where you go before a club, they're the direct competition and alternative. Late bars are now open until the early hours offering more varied choice and freedom to do as you like. You can come and go as you please when you want a change of surroundings and social crowd, which is something a club, by its nature just can't offer. However, that doesn't mean it's doomed, it just means it has to re-evaluate what it can offer that a bar can't. Decide what it is, what it does, and play to its strengths.
Instead of hitting the problem head on, most clubs have seemingly just hoped people would come back as if late bars are a passing fad.

Some say (quire rightly) that the smoking ban had a big impact as many nightclubs located above street level simply could not offer an outdoor smoking area. Given that customers are expected to be in there for several hours without leaving… That’s a problem for a smoker.

It would be incredibly easy to blame the entire decline of the nightclub scene on licencing hours and the smoking ban but the world has changed drastically in the last decade. There are many factors which are not immediately obvious or even directly related to the nightlife scene which have had a significant impact. These are things which a club owner would never have foreseen years in advance due to just how quickly things change. Let me illustrate a few:

The licencing laws were changed in 2005 but there was also a significant international recession which hit shortly after. These times of economic uncertainty and supermarket drinks prices becoming ever lower in the last 10 years have undoubtedly taken their toll. To combat cheap supermarket prices, many clubs began offering less-than-responsible drink deals e.g. "3-4-1" deals and “all you can drink” for the admission price. This caused outcry that clubs were causing social mayhem at closing time (especially for hospital A&E departments), "creating a generation of binge drinkers" and  as a result the government proposed a ban on such offers.

Social patterns and how people choose to spend their time has changed in general. A lot of people will now entertain friends at home and only have a night out every few weeks. A dinner party or a bottle of wine and Netflix has become the norm for many. There are more forms of instant entertainment at everyone’s disposal than ever. It's no longer a case of Saturday night = Clubbing.

In the last decade it has become increasingly difficult for younger people to buy a home so they have to save like never before. Staying out until 3/4 am just isn't feasible for many when you’ve got to plan for your future more than in any period in history. People need to have something to show for their money and drinking has gone way down the list. Many young people will save for a holiday or festival weekend instead of going out every week.

Changes in musical tastes and how we listen to it cannot be underestimated. People used to attend clubs to hear all the new music first, with the emergence of the internet that is no longer one of a club's roles in society. There was a day in the not so distant past when brand new music simply wasn’t so available. You went to hear a DJ play the new ‘white labels’ which is where many heard new tracks for the first time.
DJ’s made their name by playing the club circuit but it is now commonplace to get exposure online, uploading your mixes to various sites and gaining a national and even international following from their bedroom without having any reputation as a club DJ. Calvin Harris, anyone?
Many bigger UK clubs were founded on the back of the house music scene and a single DJ playing to a crowd of people there to specifically listen to one genre. I think people demand choice now in all areas, music included. House music nights are becoming increasingly niche and underground in most cities.

Online dating. Yep, that’s right… Online dating. Nightclubs were the universally accepted place that people went at the weekend on the lookout for a suitable member of the opposite sex (or same sex, whatever works). Instead of incoherent conversation with a heavily inebriated stranger and awkward courtship rituals, we can now meet people in a more calculated, sober manner with a great deal more choice from our own home. I honestly believe this has had a huge impact on the social significance of a nightclub and maybe nightlife in general as there is no longer a pressure to literally go out and meet people in order for your life to progress.
To an extent I think it’s a shame that people don’t come together to meet strangers face-to-face as much but that’s the way of the world!

The image and reputation of the nightclub scene as a whole has become damaged in recent years with particular unwanted crowds ruining the whole scene for everyone in some towns and cities. It only takes one serious incident in a club and the press jump on it, peddling propaganda, painting clubs as the root of all social evils. As a result, people feel less safe in nightclubs. Bars are seen as more civilised and therefore customers, especially women, feel safer and where the women go... The men follow. That's just nature's law!

As an example, Sheffield (UK) is a city whose once nationally respected club scene suffered greatly from violence (fatal on a number of occasions), insurance fraud and drug distribution. So to take no risks, Sheffield City Council and South Yorkshire Police banned a number of club nights in the city and prohibited any more from happening, with a number of promoters also banned from the city. Going to a club in Sheffield all of a sudden was not seen as safe or a scene many people wanted to be part of.

Do 'most' people on a night out these days want to be pushed into a building like cattle after queuing for an hour, paying a high entry fee, to be held captive for inflated drinks prices while listening to one genre of music played at deafening levels? I'm not saying they don't, I'm sure some still do, but do club owners actually ask the question? Is that what ‘most’ people want or just a niche? Is there enough of those people anymore to sustain a whole industry? Well, the answer is clearly... No.
I can't name too many run-of-the-mill nightclubs which have a more adult, civilised atmosphere. But I can name plenty of very successful bars which do. This is a cultural shift which clubs must move with, but many haven't.

Why do people stop going 'clubbing' at a certain age? In my experience it's because of the above factors associated with clubs. Most just aren't sophisticated by anyone's modern standards and don’t make you feel valued as a customer. Owners are losing the client base who actually have the most disposable income to spend, in favour of those spending their student loan (sorry to generalise…). In a never ending recession, we can all agree that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There is a failure to adapt on every level.

For a number of the reasons I have given so far, part of me feels it's a genuine shame that we have lost part of our nightlife culture because of the social hub a club used to be. Nightclubs actually played a valuable role within society. Strangers and friends alike meeting to share common ground, be part of a scene and have a good time at the end of a working week.
Clubs have played a real part in the history of popular culture in the UK, from the Hacienda in Manchester, to Cream in Liverpool, to Gatecrasher in Sheffield, Ministry of Sound (among many other big brands) in London, God's Kitchen in Birmingham, The Arches in Glasgow... Nationwide, clubs have formed a little piece of cultural history in every major city. Shaping movements in music, fashion and cultural awareness generally.

Things do go in cycles of course, and there are periods of boom and bust in any industry. Most of these clubs (and their business model) which have closed were built on the back of a booming club culture when the demand for that formula was high, showing no originality. Naturally when demand changes, it becomes survival of the fittest, or survival of the most progressive and proactive. Not many progressed.
We can all agree it's always better to have quality over quantity so a cull of a bloated, worn out industry isn’t always a bad thing but the complete death of it probably is.

This same pattern will undoubtedly repeat and the current flavour of the month (rum bars, prohibitions bars, generic cocktail/vodka bars etc etc) will plateau and fade to make room for the next phase and fashions of nightlife. Bars will adopt a new format and sell their product in a new way, reacting to changes in wider society. It's not a choice, it's a necessity. Evolve or die.
People always need new reasons to go out and spend their money, when they get too familiar, they get bored and ultimately stop visiting. I have no doubt that in some reincarnation there will be another boom period for nightclubs somewhere down the line. It will always be the businesses (in ALL industries) who appear on the back of a ‘boom’ period who disappear on the back of the fashionable horse they rode in on unless they offer something wildly original.

To put all these things together and summarise... Licencing laws aside, we are just living in different times where the traditional formula of what makes a ‘nightclub’ has not kept up with its changing position in society in relation to whatever people like and do with their time. Reasons people used to visit clubs most weekends are either obsolete, unfashionable or just no longer part of popular culture. So why keep plugging away, urinating into the wind?
It's easy to blame late bars but these nightclub casualties are the result of a changing society on almost all levels and it has taken them by surprise. To rebuild a nightclub scene in the UK it will require owners to completely shift their perspective of where a nightclub sits within the public’s psyche, repackage and resell the whole idea.

From a personal point of view, I would absolutely love the challenge of re-formulating the concept of a nightclub and I hope others feel the same because it CAN work with a little vision and originality.

Paul Hancock
(Founder / Director)