After years of captivating users with endless swipes, dating apps are now trying to get people to put their phones down and find connection in the real world.
Tinder, the pioneer of the dating swipe, is now one of the companies leading this expansion of IRL events. In March, the company introduced an Events feature in its app and hosted a pilot event for users in Los Angeles.
Since then, the feature has started to catch on, especially with younger people, said Tinder chief product officer Mark Kantor. The company since March has seen 71% of its Gen Z users in L.A. visit the Events feature on its app. Meanwhile, only 63% of users 25 and older engaged with it.
The company has now expanded the feature to 20 cities, mostly in the U.S. but also in Europe. The idea, Kantor told Fortune via email, is to shed the label of “dating event” and instead allow users to meet potential matches while doing something they already love like pickleball, trivia, or sauna and cold plunge sessions.
The company has partnered with several companies to facilitate these kinds of activities including City Pickle, Joust, and Othership.
“The activity gives people a natural starting point, and the shared experience takes some of the pressure out of meeting someone new,” he said.
Another established dating app company, Bumble, said it is also helping extend its reach beyond swipes and messages with events and activations. This year, the company has taken over bars across New York for singles mixers, hosted a rooftop party in Nashville, and held an event with Barstool Sports’ Tommy Smokes in Boston.
“IRL has been part of Bumble’s DNA from the start. We know that one of the biggest points of friction in dating today is the gap between connecting online and actually meeting in person, and we’re focused on helping close that gap,” a Bumble spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.
Outside of dating apps, Gen Z and other young people have increasingly turned to in-person activities like run clubs for a sense of community, and also for romantic connection. According to Strava, participation in run clubs grew 59% over the past two years. At the same time, Gen Z is drinking less alcohol at bars and clubs, to the dismay of the night life industry.
Dating app companies’ increasing push for real-world events comes as user numbers have fallen.
Tinder’s daily active users were down 4% year over year in the second quarter, which was a slight improvement compared to past quarters. Paying Tinder users fell to 8.5 million as of the second quarter, an 11.5% drop compared to the same period two years earlier.
Bumble has experienced a steeper decline, with total paying users falling to 3.2 million in the second quarter from 4.1 million two years earlier—a 24% drop.
Courtesy of BumbleSwipe fatigue
Partly to blame for these declines may be swipe fatigue. A study of nearly 9,000 respondents from reverse lookup company Clarity Check in July found that 58% of respondents had deleted a dating app because they found it “emotionally draining.” Another 44% said they would prefer to meet someone in a low-pressure setting rather than get to know them through a profile.
Breeze, a dating app based in Delft, Netherlands, was created explicitly to get people to meet rather than swipe. The company, which has a team of 41 and has raised about $7 million in funding, charges by date rather than subscription.
Each user receives only a handful of profiles each day. If two people match, they fill out their availability rather than opening a chat, and then Breeze brings the pair together at a partner venue.
“A short real-world date tells you more about compatibility than weeks of texting, and it does it faster and with less of the anxiety and second-guessing that endless chat creates,” Marco van der Woude, Breeze’s cofounder and head of business development, told Fortune in an email.
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