What age demographic tends to spend the most on clubbing? Of course, clubbing is very much a young person’s game – but a number of complex factors and contemporary trends mean that discerning which age brackets are responsible for the most liberal expenditure in nightclubs can be far from straightforward. We have attempted to investigate…

Nightclubs: still most popular with the young

Research carried out in 2013 suggests that, while nightclubs have indeed continued to attract largely young adults in their twenties, they have sharply fallen out of favour even with this category of revellers. This research was in the form of a national survey of 2,000 people, carried out by advisory and restructuring group Zolfo Cooper.

The survey revealed that, while the popularity of pubs, bars and restaurants generally held up during 2013, nightclub visits by a range of adults fell from a monthly average of 2.5 times to a mere 1.7 times. A similar trend was seen with the 18-34 age group, except that the visits fell from 2.7 to 1.7. Paul Hemming, Zolfo’s corporate finance head, suggested that young people were generally spending less on nightclubs than previously.

Hey, big spenders!

Nonetheless, it seems that, when young people do make rare nightclub visits, they spend big. This is especially the case with men; a poll of over 2,400 Britons by VoucherCodesPro revealed that, during a night out, men spent an average of £126.42. This was £88.52 higher than the average spend of women – and Nick Swan, founder and CEO of VoucherCodesPro, suggested that “men are more likely to buy larger rounds or bottles of spirits for the group.”

Though the results of this poll were published last year, more recent research has lent even more credibility to the theory that young people do tend to splurge more when clubbing. A survey by Blu Nightlife has revealed that people in the age brackets of 18-26 and 27-35 are especially keen drinkers.

A closer look at the numbers

Responses to this survey suggest that about a third of people aged between 18 and 35 are teetotallers; by contrast, about half of the respondents aged between 36 and 53 reported routinely resisting alcohol. Meanwhile, roughly half of the former group said they drunk alcohol once or twice a week; only about 27% of the latter group claimed the same. These figures strongly hint that people in their twenties indeed spend the most when clubbing.