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New Year’s revelers welcoming 2025 in a 35-hour event will be the last to grace the dance floor at the Watergate club, an iconic Berlin venue that has become the latest victim of the death of the club – the death of the club.
“The days when Berlin was flooded with club-loving visitors are over,” the club’s management said in a farewell statement. The Watergate co-owner blamed cost pressures, declining tourism, waning enthusiasm from Generation Z and the rise of music festivals for its closure.
The pressures that led to the death 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, clubs are closing their nights earlier.
According to a Financial Times analysis of events on the website Resident Advisor, the proportion of club nights going beyond 3am fell in 12 out of 15 global cities between 2014 and 2024.
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“People can only go out for so many hours,” said Lutz Leichsenring, co-founder of international nightlife consultancy VibeLab. “There’s a lot of competition between nighttime and daytime events.”
Leichsenring said venue owners often closed their doors earlier to save costs, as revenue from liquor sales tended to drop in the early morning hours.
More restrictive licensing rules post-Covid-19 have also become a problem for clubs and promoters in cities around the globe. While cities have appointed night mayors and adopted “24-hour city” policies in recent years, increased oversight of the nighttime economy since the pandemic has resulted in tighter policing of late-night establishments, Leichsenring added.
The growing popularity of daytime events and festivals is another factor. Mike Vosters, whose company Matinee Social Club hosts early-night parties in New York, said that while the 5 to 10 p.m. events were originally aimed at millennials who no longer wanted to party into the small hours, they had “a ton of interest” from revelers in their 20s.
According to Vosters, the shift away from the “bottle service” club culture and a new cross-generational emphasis on healthy living have been two of the main drivers behind the increased enthusiasm for early-ending dance parties.
Resident Advisor data reflected an increase in daytime parties, with several major cities showing an increase in events ending at 10 p.m.
Melbourne claims to be the live music capital of the world and 20 years ago boasted a vibrant nightclub scene. However, the sector has been in sharp decline in the city as consumer habits changed and the cost of organizing events increased, especially after the pandemic.
One entertainment industry executive said young people were less inclined to stay out until 6 a.m. as they are more health conscious and less frivolous with money than previous generations. This is reflected in Melbourne’s nightclub closures – with more than 100 closed in recent years – and fewer clubs staying open all night.
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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, a DJ and co-founder of Give Us the Night, said the stalling of a proposed law that would extend closing time to 6am has left the industry in limbo, with operators nervous to invest in new locations .
He estimates there are about 20 to 25 clubs left in and around the city, home to 1.3 million people. “It’s too expensive to open a place now. . . or even to open your doors for an individual night,” he added.
But there are signs of hope for dance music. A study published by the International Music Summit, an annual conference held in Ibiza, found that the electronic music industry had grown by 17 percent in 2023, reaching an annual revenue of $11.8 billion.
In the 15 cities analyzed by the FT using Resident Advisor events data, venues listing more than five events increased by 60 per cent in 2024 compared to a decade ago. More than 35,000 artists were booked to play in those cities since 2014 – a 90 percent increase over the same period.
“People still want community. “People still want to go out,” Vosters said. “That hasn’t diminished, and music is still the best way to do that.”
