“Competitive socialising” is a relatively new term for a much older habit. Industry researchers trace its use in British hospitality to around 2015, when it began describing venues that combined food and drink with games such as darts, bowling, pool and table tennis.
What changed was not the games but the business built around them. The dartboard moved from the corner of the pub to the centre of the experience. Mini-golf became an evening activity rather than an occasional outing. Digital scoring, timed bookings and purpose-built courses made games easier for groups to play without joining a club or knowing much about the activity beforehand.
A 1930 view of Glenelg shows miniature golf operating alongside other leisure attractions, illustrating that activity-led social entertainment in Australia long predates today’s competitive-socialising venues.
Image Source: Here
That model is now gaining ground in Australia. The category stretches from interactive darts and technologically enhanced mini-golf to bowling, shuffleboard and multi-game venues. The interesting question is not why Australians suddenly want to play these games: they have played many of them for decades. It is why hospitality businesses have discovered that giving customers something to do can be as important as giving them somewhere to eat or drink.
How Online Poker Changed the Way Australians Competed Socially
Australia’s poker boom is a useful early showcase of what happens when technology lowers the barriers around a social game. Poker already had an established live scene: Melbourne’s live poker scene was already expanding in the early 2000s, with major tournament fields growing substantially before the mid-decade poker boom.
For social gamers looking to play poker online in Australia options, the important innovation was not simply being able to reproduce a card table on a screen. Online poker changed the economics of participation. A physical game requires a table, players who are free at the same time, cards, chips and someone to manage the action.
A digital table could assemble players automatically, deal instantly and begin another hand seconds after the previous one ended. Someone could therefore accumulate in weeks the number of hands that might previously have taken months of occasional home games to experience.
Satellites connected digital play back to live competition
It also created a new bridge between casual play and serious live competition: the online satellite. Instead of entering a major tournament directly, players could compete in smaller qualifying events for a seat. That pathway became visible in Australia. Digital play, in other words, was feeding people back into a physical social event rather than replacing it.
The image was created by us using AI-generated visuals.
The format also changed how poker knowledge circulated. Online players could see far more hands, compare decisions across repeated situations and discuss strategy with geographically dispersed communities. Poker became less dependent on access to a particular card room or private circle and more like a skill that could be practised whenever a player had time.
Poker offers an early model for today’s competitive socialising
That history has a direct parallel with today’s competitive-socialising boom. Technology works best when it removes friction around the game rather than becoming the game itself. Automated darts scoring, interactive mini-golf and digital leaderboards follow much the same logic: less time administering play, more immediate feedback and more opportunities for people of different experience levels to compete together.
Australia’s poker experience showed that digital tools could actually make an old social game more accessible, more repeatable and, ultimately, more connected to live competition.
Experience Spending Is Creating Space for Activity-Led Nights Out
Competitive socialising also fits a broader shift towards spending on experiences. The strongest evidence does not come from one measure alone. Consumer research, transaction data and mature overseas markets all point towards people placing value on entertainment that gives them something to actively participate in.
| Leisure | Recent finding | Why it matters |
| Future entertainment spending | 21% of respondents in a 4,000-person international survey, which included Australia, planned to spend more on entertainment experiences in the following year. (Source: Here) | There is continued demand for paid experiences even when consumers have many entertainment choices. |
| Australian experience spending | Australian tourists directed 19% of tourism spending to experiences and nightlife in 2024, compared with a 12% global average. (Source: Here) | Australians show a comparatively strong willingness to allocate money to memorable activities. |
Different games can serve the same basic social need, so the category is not dependent on one activity becoming fashionable. Mini-golf can appeal to one group, while darts or arcade competition suits another. The common product is participation, as in the case of social gatherings.
Technology and Flexible Spaces Are Changing the Traditional Venue
The next stage of competitive socialising is likely to depend as much on venue design as on the games themselves.
Australia’s FY2024 night-time economy data shows growth varying by sector: leisure and entertainment recorded some of the strongest gains, while food generated the highest core-sector turnover and retail remained the largest category by establishments.
Source: Here
Operators need enough room to create an activity people will leave home for, but the space also has to remain easy to understand. Long instructions and complicated equipment work against one of the format’s main strengths: the ability to arrive and start playing quickly.
The category is moving beyond niche entertainment
International market data gives another indication of the category’s momentum. Savills found that the number of competitive-socialising venues in major UK city centres rose by 38% between 2018 and 2023, with particularly strong growth in formats such as urban mini-golf and multi-activity concepts.
The Australian market is developing on a smaller scale, but the overseas pattern shows how quickly activity-led entertainment can move from a niche concept into an established leisure category.
Data shows that competitive socialising expanded across several formats between 2018 and 2023, with particularly strong growth in multi-activity venues, solo sports and urban mini-golf.
Source: Here
Unconventional spaces are becoming part of the model
On the other hand, Australia is already showing a related change in the types of properties used for entertainment. Retail property executive William Power described competitive-socialising operators as “actively seeking out former retail premises or non-standard spaces including multilevel or basement configurations.”
That flexibility is important. Darts requires a different footprint from bowling, while mini-golf can be shaped around corners, separate rooms and unusual layouts. Former retail space can therefore become part of the experience rather than merely housing it.
Technology is reducing friction around familiar games
Technology makes the model more adaptable again. Automated scoring can shorten the learning curve, interactive displays can change game formats between sessions, and digital booking systems can organise groups before they arrive. None of these features needs to replace the physical game. Their value is in removing friction around it.
That balance may be the defining feature of the category’s growth in Australia: familiar games, easier participation and venues designed around doing something together rather than simply occupying the same room.
