Text/Wang Xinxi
Billiards is also known as billiards. Twenty years ago, billiards was a very popular leisure sport, and billiards halls were crowded around universities, factories, arcade game stores, Internet cafes, and villages and towns. But nowadays, many people lament that young people are not very interested, and the business of many billiard halls is getting worse and worse.
Some practitioners in the billiards industry said that only 10% of the operators in this industry are making money, 40% are losing money, and 50% of the bosses are flat. We can feel that there are fewer and fewer people playing billiards now, and the group of billiards enthusiasts is shrinking visibly.
Why is billiards not popular?
In fact, billiards has become no longer popular, which is related to the change in the leisure and entertainment trend of the times. In fact, the original group of billiards lovers came from the post-70s, post-80s, and post-90s, and since the post-95s and post-00s, the popularity of billiards has shown a precipitous decline among young people.
Why do the post-70s, post-80s, and post-90s love billiards more? In fact, it is related to the barren entertainment life around the 90s, people's interests have a tendency to collectivize, in the 90s, the Internet has not yet developed, young people get together, and the entertainment life is roughly playing cards, playing arcade games, playing billiards, watching VCD/DVD, etc. Especially in the countryside, that billiards is the village head culture of the young people in the village.
After tea and dinner, in the fields, you can always see three or five men gathered in the billiard hall at the head of the village. Generally, this kind of place is often a collection of billiards, game consoles, mahjong as a whole, and is a comprehensive entertainment place in the village. At that time, the popularity of billiards was a collective leisure and entertainment culture, which was a way to find a sense of group identity.
The sport of billiards has high and low skills, billiards is played well, and it is easy to gain everyone's recognition and admiration, in this group atmosphere, everyone is quite interested in billiards.
After 2000, the development of the Internet began to have an impact on this collective entertainment culture, and Internet cafes began to divert billiards and arcade game crowds, but, despite this, billiards is still a popular choice for young people to enjoy leisure and entertainment activities outside of Internet cafes. In the periphery of the university town, the billiard hall is often opened around the Internet café, and everyone does not interfere with each other, and each has its own living space.
But in the era of mobile Internet and the prosperity of smartphones, there are fewer and fewer people playing billiards.
This stems from the fact that on the one hand, there are too many entertainment and leisure options today, and secondly, the development of smart phones has diverted people's time for a lot of outdoor entertainment, occupying people's attention, replacing too much fragmented time, these entertainment methods are within reach, and people are more inclined to use more low-cost entertainment methods to please themselves, resulting in a change in lifestyle, more and more modern people are not only unwilling to party, unwilling to participate in group activities, let alone play billiards together.
Trendy sports are diverted, technology and learning thresholds are high, and billiards is not cool in the eyes of young people
In addition, billiards is a sport that flourished in the 90s, but it is not cool in the eyes of today's young people.
In their eyes, offline social entertainment also has more and more attractive gameplay such as board games, script killing, escape rooms, live CS, bars, etc. Among the entertainment trends that young people like, most young people prefer trendy sports.
According to the "2022 Youth Trendy Sports Report", frisbee has surpassed skateboarding and cycling to become the most popular trendy sport among young people, and sixty percent of young people are eager to make friends on the frisbee field, which has become a new trend for young people to socialize. In addition, among the popular fashion sports, land punching boards quickly went out of the circle, rock climbing is also popular among young people, cycling has become a scenery that often appears on the streets, and flag football and paddle boarding are also offline sports that have been active during the epidemic, and are now also popular among some young people.
These trendy sports and emerging entertainment have diverted a large number of young people who should have been the target consumer group of billiards.
In fact, there is a historical reason why billiards is popular among the post-80s and 90s generation, that is, the entertainment projects of that era were relatively poor, and they were willing to spend time learning to play billiards.
Due to the cheap fee and as a collective leisure sport, many post-75s, post-80s, and post-90s generations have spent a lot of time practicing and learning to play billiards.
However, due to the abundance of entertainment and the popularity of smartphones, young people nowadays are not necessarily interested in having the enthusiasm to spend time practicing billiards. Billiards, you can only be interested in the sport of billiards, in today's post-00 generation of young people, the technical threshold and learning threshold of billiards have excluded a large part of the group.
There is a saying that people stubbornly love what they liked when they were young, and if you don't feel about a sport when you're young, then it's likely that after middle age, it's hard for you to develop an interest in it.
Middle-aged people have little circle and leisure time, and it is difficult to have time to meet in the billiard hall
From today's point of view, the loyal lovers of billiards are still middle-aged people, but in the circle of middle-aged people today, everyone is overwhelmed by life, there is not much leisure time, and there is a little time to nest on the sofa and play with mobile phones.
If it is a sport, basketball, badminton and other sports are more in line with the preferences of middle-aged people, which can not only exercise, but also chat and party, which seems to be more in line with the needs of young people and even middle-aged people today than billiards, which is relatively slow and boring.
In today's world, everyone's acquaintance social circle is fixed, and the probability that acquaintances' social circles are interested in billiards and are willing to gather in billiards halls often is not high, and many people lack this continuous interest and enthusiasm. This offline social model lacks sustainability and long-term fixed consumption stickiness.
The price is getting more and more expensive, and middle-aged people have fewer and fewer playmates, how can billiards survive?
Judging from the lack of young lovers, the future popularity of billiards is worrying. Many practitioners speculate that billiard halls will encounter various problems in the past few years and face the risk of bankruptcy.
This is also due to the fierce competition in billiards now, and the interest of middle-aged people in the basic market is also decreasing, after all, billiards is not a one-person sport. And this generation of middle-aged people, a common phenomenon is that the situation of calling friends and friends is rare anymore, because of work and family, the original circle continues to disperse, more people find that when people reach middle age, there are fewer and fewer friends, and many old friends have families, the trivialities and pressures of life have reduced socialization, which is also an important reason why billiards has slowly lost its audience.
On the other hand, the price of billiards is getting more and more expensive, and billiards may need to reduce prices and improve services to survive in this era. The price of 40 yuan ~ 50 yuan an hour is still considered expensive by some salaried people.
In terms of improving services, some billiard halls are currently on the rise of playing and sparring activities, but the price of sparring or playing is generally about 50 yuan ~ 100 yuan / hour, and the price factor is also one of the factors that prevent consumers from playing billiards.
Of course, for billiards, there are still more ways to attract young people at the level of marketing and events, and appropriately change the rules and models to attract more young people to participate.
On the other hand, it is necessary to change the way of survival, for example, today, many Internet companies have billiard tables in the company's leisure room, and colleagues can have a meal between them when they take a break after dinner. More and more companies pay attention to the humanized management of employees and the space for relative freedom, which is also the living space of billiards manufacturers.
However, although as a niche sport, we still see that many fans still play billiards in the billiards hall from time to time, but billiards is becoming a nostalgic activity. Billiards will not disappear, but it may become more and more niche, as a leisure sport witnessed by the youth of the 80s and 90s, billiards is no longer popular, which means the end of a generation's youth, but in this process, many people have not had time to say goodbye.
Author: Wang Xinxi, Senior Reviewer of TMT This article is not reproduced without permission