Guest Blog for The Leisure Property Forum

by Mark Warne, Director of F&B, Hospitality and Leisure at Landsec, Retail

Competitive socialising – what do we mean?

I was asked the question recently: “If there’s a finite amount of spend in the hospitality space, and competitive socialising is growing, who’s losing out”?

Is it cinema, the long-time bastion of the industry?

Is it pubs with just drinks-focused offerings perhaps now seen as limited?

Is it restaurants that are seeing leisure businesses now offering a competitive menu?

Alternatively, is the overall spend simply growing as part of that long-noted macro-trend of ‘experience’ over ‘stuff’?

Or is it ‘a bit of all the above’

Perhaps the starting point is to try and define what we mean by competitive socialising.

Speaking to several business owners the phrase is possibly around 10-12 years old, led by the likes of ‘All Star Lanes’ and ‘Bounce Ping Pong’, but that it had really jet-charged in the last 5-7 years through the growth of ‘Swingers – the crazy golf club’ and ‘Flight Club’ amongst others.

While at its heart, ‘competitive socialising’ would include every format of bowling, mini-golf and snooker hall that have filled out-of-town leisure destinations for years, I believe the definition really lies in the focus on city-centre environments and food & beverage being an intrinsic part of the offer. Now no longer restricted to the ‘big two’ of bowling and golf, everything from axe-throwing to fairground attractions, cricket to clay pigeon shooting and even virtual reality now sits under that title.

The competitive socialising consumer

This balance of leisure, food and drink also helps us understand the core competitive socialising consumer which I believe is evenly gender-balanced and starts with early workers and university students, seeking out the likes of ‘Roxy Leisure’ in Leeds or ‘Lane7’ in Edinburgh, and continues well into their thirties. The strength of these offers is that they encourage both ‘must-do’ first-time experiences and ‘leaderboard bagging’ repeat visits. They’re also still very much in growth mode with a number of the newer names, like ‘Clays’ and ‘Fairgame’, still currently only present in London.

In contrast, the largest audience group for cinema remains families, in part evidenced by the biggest-grossing films of the last two years (including Maverick, Bond, Spiderman and Avatar) all receiving 12A certificates.

While some spend at cinemas may have fallen as the Gen Z / Gen Y audience chooses to spend its leisure cash on more active socialising (possibly also driven by them being the early adopters of streaming), I don’t think this is the core cause.

I also think that cinema is still in post-Covid recovery mode and, until the full slate of releases is restored in the latter part of this year and in 2024, it will be a little while longer before we see this cohort back to pre-Covid custom. I for one think that cinema will always be a huge part of the socialising map for future generations.

Turning to pubs, they too were traditional owners of ‘competitive socialising’ but latterly those that have failed to reinvigorate their offer and remain neglected – with beer-stained pool tables, dusty dart boards and moth-eaten board games with pieces missing – are the ones seeing the most attrition, as customers seek to do something more than just eat and drink. But those therefore like ‘ETM’, who with ‘Greenwood’ in Landsec‘s Victoria estate, brought in a new shuffleboard concept a few years back alongside that perennial favourite the pool table, have seen workers and tourists continue to flock to their sites. They in turn haven’t just got the balance right between leisure, food and drink, but have also positioned themselves effectively as premium sports-viewing bars, adding further reason to visit.

Street food and craft beer

The rise of competitive socialising has also coincided with the rise of street food and that of craft beer and cocktails as well as other sub-genres within the drinks market. At their best, all elements work in harmony and are often amongst market leaders. The cricket concept ‘Sixes’, conceived by the team behind former Scottish-heritage, London-based restaurant ‘Mac & Wild’, has some of the best pub food I’ve ever had, while ‘Gravity Active Entertainment’, who with us arguably opened the first ‘House of Competitive Socialising’ in Wandsworth, are bringing UK firsts like ‘800 Degrees Pizza’ and ‘Sides’ to their offer.

That, on top of the majesty that is the cocktail menu at ‘F1 Arcade’ in our One New Change development in London, means that food and drink aficionados are searching out these concepts as much for what they’ll be consuming as what they’ll be playing. Again, I think those pubs and restaurants who aren’t offering the same for this demographic are the ones who will see spend stolen.

Leisure spend – on the rise?

So, is it just that the people seeking out competitive socialising experiences are increasing their total spend? I think they are.

When wallets start to get squeezed for this group, leisure spend in general is the most important bit to protect and, if anything, grows with an element of ‘revenge spend’ attached, determined to make their money go as far as they can through social experiences. I think therefore, that there will be some nibbling away of that ‘stuff’ spend to ensure that customers can still throw darts, eat sliders and drink pale ales with their mates, loved ones and colleagues.

It will be interesting to see how the longer post-Covid recovery and rising cost of living impacts wider leisure spend, particularly where travel is concerned. Will there be an increasing reassignment of spend from domestic experiences to international as part of a wider leisure trend?

Crucially though, I don’t think that this will hurt the growth of competitive socialising which is increasingly being seen as far from a flash in the pan and very much here to stay and grow. Instead, much like any industry, it’s the brands and uses within the wider Hospitality space that fail to innovate and take learnings from this change in consumer trend that will miss out.