Introduction: The State of Play
In the years since the global financial crisis, the UK leisure industry has been a bull in a bear market, rebounding quickly following the crash, and sustaining this growth for close to a decade. The reluctance of consumers to forego leisure just as incomes were being squeezed, and the importance of leisure in consumers’ lives gave rise to a trend which we called The Play Society.
In the last two years, however, Brexit-driven household and national economic uncertainty has badly damaged consumer confidence, with UK consumers showing signs of being in a recessionary state of...