A third of nightclubs in the United Kingdom have shut in the past five years. Yet Cambridge clubs are always full to the brim, and people seem to genuinely enjoy spending tons of money inside a sweaty, nauseating, ear-piercing environment where they face all sorts of unpleasantness, from the almost inevitable elbowing and toe-stepping to warding off a fight in the toilets, being vomited on, and being harassed by drunk, clueless and intolerably insolent punters. Cambridge clubs, unlike those in the rest of the country, seem to be doing quite alright, charging a fiver for a simple vodka and Coke which you can prepare at home for about 70p, and close to a tenner for a pint of good ale, obtainable for around £2.50 courtesy of your local supermarket. How and why is that still a thing?

For a university town like Cambridge with a student population of around 25 per cent (28,574 students) the simple truth is that there is a shortage of clubs. The grand total of four true nightclubs (excluding bars, pubs, the Junction and the Corn Exchange, which only open for special events) – Lola Lo, Kuda, Fez, and Ballare – means that there is one club for every 7,143.5 students. It goes without saying that a substantial proportion of students arrive at Cambridge with more than enough money to spend on nightlife, and peer pressure comes to bear on everyone else from the very first day of Freshers’ Week. Going out on a regular basis is supposed to be a mandatory staple of stereotypical student life and is certainly an obligation for every aspiring BNOC. Those conditions seamlessly create high demand for clubbing, which is met with an acute club shortage. Kuda, the largest Cambridge nightclub, otherwise known as Life, has a capacity of no more than 1,000 people. This means that on any average night, only 14 per cent of all Cambridge students can go out clubbing. Of course, not all Cambridge students go out, but a good percentage of them do: an analysis of previous articles in Varsity suggests this proportion is somewhere between 40 and 60 per cent of all students, which means that only around 30 per cent of those willing to go clubbing can be inside a club at any given point during the night.

The fact that so many students queue for so few places gives the four clubs monopoly power, which they use to raise prices without losing customers. The problem would be solved if setting up a club in Cambridge were easy; however, rents have skyrocketed in recent years, alcohol licensing costs a fortune, and dealing with complaining neighbours and businesses is no cheap task. Lack of competition, high rents and prohibitive alcohol taxation by the government are passed on to students, who pay for them with their expensive drinks.

Nightclubs in Cambridge are also blessed with a customer base of young, disproportionately well-off, mostly healthy people with a “work hard, play hard” mentality. The decadent existence of many Cambridge students is financed by their parents, which creates a Greek-style, pre-crisis-investment-bank euphoria for unbridled spending: we spend and enjoy life now, but if we run into trouble, there is always someone to bail us out. At worst, the cost of this is short-lived anger and a temporary decline in funding - even the grumpiest of parents are not willing to go much farther. Clubs’ marketing strategies are also astute and additionally boost demand for clubbing: they use product differentiation to advertise ‘different’ nights – Jelly Baby and the new Lust Night in Kuda, Lola’s Let’s Kill Disco, FRESH Tuesdays at Fez, and all sorts of drinks ‘discounts’. They recruit promoters—the young and popular, mostly—to post links to their club nights. Friends can add their names to a Facebook list for further ‘discounts’. After a night out, photos of clubbers appear on friends’ Facebook feeds, branded with the club’s logo. The wide availability of inexpensive alcohol for pre-drinking, in college bars, ents and supermarkets, also paradoxically helps clubs, as students are more likely to go clubbing and less likely to be thrifty when under the influence.

So the next time a bartender demands a tenner from you, think about how hard your parents have worked to earn it. Unless, of course, your parents could buy the whole club if you ask nicely.