Meeting IRL: Even Tinder's Own Boss Admits It's the Goal

Tinder’s boss has just admitted it outright: single people want to meet in real life, and his app is “leaning into” that reality. The admission lands just as a “massive exodus” deserts swiping, according to the New York Post, and as Wall Street only rewards Match Group for promising a pivot towards real life meetings. A signal that finally comes from within the industry itself, confirming exactly what Premeets has championed since it launched.

Tinder’s boss admits the shift

Spencer Rascoff, chief executive of Match Group and Tinder since 2025, said Tinder was not “running away” from the fact that young singletons would rather meet in person than online, according to The Standard. He points to an internal study carried out by Match Group to justify the change of direction.

“We have so much research that shows that people want to meet in person, at events, including from this new study.” (Spencer Rascoff, quoted by The Standard)

The same study found that 61% of single UK adults would like more of their social life to happen face to face, even though 43% of them say most of their socialising happens through a screen, a figure that rises to 51% among Gen Z, according to The Standard. Another telling figure from the same survey: only 4% of Gen Z respondents met their most recent partner in a pub, bar or club.

A “mass exodus” away from swiping

While Tinder talks about adapting, the New York Post uses harsher words: singles are abandoning swiping in droves, tired of not finding true love there, according to the New York Post. Per a 2026 Harris poll cited by the same article, three quarters of Americans now believe dating apps have made romance feel transactional.

The financial figures back this up:

• Tinder: monthly active users down 7% year on year in March, paying users down 5% to 8.5 million and revenue down 1% to around $457 million in the second quarter, according to Fortune
• Bumble: paying users down 16.4% to around 3.2 million and revenue down 15.2% to $210.5 million in the second quarter, according to TechNewsWorld
• Bumble has just agreed to be taken private for $1.3 billion, down from a $14 billion valuation at its 2021 IPO, according to the New York Post
• Match Group cut 13% of its workforce last year, Bumble cut 30% in June, still according to the New York Post

For Professor Marshall Van Alstyne, quoted by the New York Post, dating apps first created value by making it easier for people to meet, before entering what he calls an extractive phase.

“Initially, they were creating a lot of value to get folks on board, but now they’ve entered the extractive phase.” (Marshall Van Alstyne, quoted by the New York Post)

Even Wall Street only rewards the pivot to real life

Since taking the helm, Spencer Rascoff has introduced an internal metric called “sparks”, which tracks conversations between matched users that reach at least six exchanges, a threshold he sees as more likely to lead to a real meeting, according to Fortune. Tinder has also launched in person events in more than 50 cities worldwide, with over 1,700 meet-ups already organised and a target of 75 cities by the end of the year, according to the New York Post and The Standard.

Match Group has also raised Tinder’s marketing budget by $50 million this year, still according to the New York Post, and expects annual revenue of between $885 and $895 million for 2026, down 2 to 3% on last year, despite Hinge’s growth, whose revenue rose by more than a fifth in the second quarter, according to The Standard. Markets are no longer rewarding the promise of unlimited swiping, but rather a return to real contact.

Singles are going back to basics

At the same time, older methods are making a comeback. The New York Post notes that running clubs, pickleball leagues and human matchmakers are attracting growing numbers of disillusioned singles, citing matchmaking firm Tawkify, whose growth is said to reach 30% a year. Singles events listed on Eventbrite are even said to have doubled between 2022 and 2025, according to the same source.

This return to the tangible sometimes takes unexpected forms, such as writing handwritten letters to counter dating app burnout, a trend covered by DC News Now. What all these practices have in common: stepping away from the screen to find direct contact again, rather than waiting for an algorithm to decide on your behalf.

Premeets: real life from day one

What industry leaders are discovering today, Premeets set as its starting point. Rather than swiping through random profiles miles away, the app shows who has planned to be in the same place at the same time: a bar tonight, a festival this weekend, a hotel or campsite during a trip.

Context comes before the profile, not the other way round. You chat with people who will actually be there, to arrange a meeting that happens in the days that follow, not some vague point in the future. And since Premeets also covers friendship and outings between travellers, it answers the same need highlighted by the studies above: broadening your social life beyond the screen, whether travelling solo or in a group.

In short

The admission finally comes from those who built the swipe model in the first place: real life is missing, and Tinder’s and Bumble’s own numbers prove it. While the industry scrambles to catch up with events and new metrics, Premeets has been building meetings around place and time from the very start.