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New Year’s revelers welcoming 2025 at the 35-hour event will be the last to grace the dance floor at the Watergate Club, the iconic Berlin venue that became the latest victim clubsterben — club death.
“The days when Berlin was flooded with clubbing visitors are over,” the venue’s management said in a farewell statement. The Watergate co-owner blamed cost pressures, a drop in tourism, waning Gen Z enthusiasm and the rise of music festivals for its closure.
The pressures that led to the collapse of Watergate are behind a trend that is transforming nightlife capitals from Berlin to Barcelona and Melbourne to New York: despite the growing popularity of dance music, clubgoers are ending their nights earlier.
The proportion of clubbing nights lasting past 3am fell in 12 out of 15 global cities between 2014 and 2024, according to a Financial Times analysis of the event by website Resident Advisor.
“People can only go out for so many hours,” said Lutz Leichsenring, co-founder of international nightlife consultancy VibeLab. “There is a lot of competition between night and day events.”
Leichsenring said bar owners often close their doors early to save on costs, as revenue from liquor sales typically drops in the early morning hours.
More restrictive licensing rules post-Covid-19 they have also become a problem for clubs and promoters in cities around the world. While cities have appointed night mayors and adopted “24-hour city” policies in recent years, additional scrutiny of the nighttime economy since the pandemic has resulted in tighter oversight of late-night establishments, Leichsenring added.
The increased popularity of daily events and festivals is another factor. Mike Vosters, whose company Matinee Social Club organizes early-night parties in New York, said the 5 to 10 p.m. events were originally aimed at millennials who no longer wanted to party into the wee hours, but received “a ton of interest” from partygoers in their 20s. there is.
According to Vosters, a move away from “bottle service” club culture and a new intergenerational emphasis on healthy living are two of the main drivers behind the wave of enthusiasm for early-ending dance parties.
Resident Advisor data reflects an increase in daytime parties, with several major cities showing increases in events that end at 10 p.m.
Melbourne is known as the live music capital of the world, and 20 years ago it boasted a vibrant night club scene. However, the sector is in steep decline in the city as consumer habits have changed and the costs of hosting events have risen, especially after the pandemic.
One entertainment industry executive said younger people are less likely to rave until 6 a.m. because they are more health conscious and less frivolous with money than previous generations. This is reflected in the closing of nightclubs in Melbourne — with more than 100 closing in recent years — and fewer clubs staying open all night.
In Dublin, campaigners are fighting to change restrictive licensing laws that require clubs to pay €410 a night to stay open between 12.30am and 2.30am.
Sunil Sharpe, DJ and co-founder of Give Us the Night, said the delay in proposed legislation that would have extended closing times to 6am had left the industry in limbo and operators nervous about investing in new venues.
He estimated that there are about 20 to 25 clubs left in the city and its suburbs, where 1.3 million people live. “Now it’s too expensive to open a place. . . or even open their doors for a single night,” he added.
But there are signs of hope for dance music. AND study published by the International Music Summit, an annual conference held in Ibiza, showed that the electronic music industry will grow by 17 percent in 2023, reaching an annual revenue of $11.8 billion.
In the 15 cities analyzed by the FT using Resident Advisor event data, places listing more than five events increased by 60 per cent in 2024 compared to a decade ago. More than 35,000 acts have been booked to perform in those cities since 2014 — a 90 percent increase over the same period.
“People still crave community. People still want to go out,” Vosters said. “It hasn’t diminished and music is still the best way to do it.”
