The Business of Love: Why Da ng Apps are Old News and Matchmaking Services are Booming
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hey say that it’s so easy to fall in love, but hard to find someone who will catch you.The idea that a da ng pool can be analyzed as a marketplace or an economy is both recently popular and very old: People have been describing newly single people as “back on the market” and analyzing da ng in terms of supply and demand for genera ons. One of the world’s oldest professions is matchmaking, and given the role of technology in our everyday lives, it’s no surprise that the da ng industry is booming. We have a few numbers for you right here. According to the Reportlinker, an award-winning market research solu on, the da ng services market size was valued at $6,7 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach $9,9 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 5,2 percent from 2019 to 2026. The online da ng services market is also on the high-rise right now and is es mated to grow by $2,01 billion during the 2020-2024 period. However, more and more people start to acknowledge the hard truth that finding true love and a significant other online is extremely difficult. “You need a lot of swipes to get a match, a lot of matches to get a number, a lot of numbers to get a date and a lot of dates to get the third date,” explains Sco Harvey, editor of Global Da ng Insights, the online da ng industry’s trade news publica on. While almost half of the adults under 35 living in the US and the UK have tried some form of digital da ng, and the mul billion-dollar industry increased by 11 percent in North America between 2014 and the start of 2019, there are growing signs that people get more and more tired of this particular
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da ng method. A BBC survey in 2018 found that da ng apps are the least preferred way for 16-34-year-old Britons to meet someone new. What is more, according to SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading provider of webbased survey solu ons, roughly 56 percent of adults view dating apps and services as either somewhat or very nega ve. As people have been turning away from dating sites and apps, the demand for professional matchmaking services has been increasing. Today, this seemingly outdated concept is flourishing among wealthy, time-poor professionals in the US, Europe, and par cularly in Asia, where matchmaking phenomena have been taking the single’s market by storm over recent years. It is rumored that the top Chinese matchmaking agency charges as much as $650,000 to find prospec ve spouses. However, John Madigan, an industry research analyst at IBISWorld, noted that “It isn’t likely that matchmaking services will overtake the online and mobile da ng market.“ To be more specific, da ng apps like Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, as well as da ng sites like Match.com, eHarmony, and chemistry.com have comprised the biggest part of the industry’s market share, leaving matchmaking just 12 percent. But Madigan has no ced that “dating app fa gue“ is driving demand for matchmakers. Professional matchmaking for people with high standards and far more money than time has become an a rac ve alterna ve for a good reason: using a third party to help find love guarantees one-on-one, highly customized, and personalized matchmaking services. Interes ngly, back
in the days, personalized matchmaking services looked different compared to now: matchmakers worked exclusively with male clients, and the standard business model was largely built on the premise of bringing potential brides to rich, single men. But not long after, the trend shi ed, and women began to turn to matchmakers to make their romanc dreams come true as well. In fact, industry sta s cs report that women typically comprise 60 percent of matchmaker customers, according to the Matchmaking Ins tute, the only state-licensed matchmaking school in the world. Speaking about why more and more wealthy individuals decide to turn to professional matchmaking services, Kailen Rosenberg, CEO, and founder of The Love Architects, the elite matchmaking consultancy firm,
