Gen Z New Yorkers are paying thousands to play board games.
NYC’s hottest private clubs in 2026 aren’t poker rooms or champagne lounges. They’re mahjong nights, chess salons, and board game collectives.
Gen Z and Millennial New Yorkers have a new luxury they’re willing to spend serious money on. Playing board games with strangers.
According to recent reporting from the New York Post, NBC News, Time Out New York, and the Standard Hotels lifestyle blog, the hottest private clubs in NYC right now are organized around analog games. Mahjong. Chess. Backgammon. Board games. The membership fees run from approachable ($17 entrance at a board game cafe meetup) to genuinely steep ($4,000+ a year at the most exclusive members-only clubs).
The people paying are not the older crowd you’d expect. They’re under 30. They grew up with smartphones. And they are deliberately seeking out the most low-tech social activity they can find.
What’s actually happening
Green Tile Social Club, the NYC mahjong collective founded in 2022 by four Asian American friends, has doubled its attendance from 4,000 to over 8,000 players in the past year. Their events look more like nightclub takeovers than auntie’s living room — a DJ spins electronic music, cocktails replace tea, and over 100 players bob to the beat while clacking tiles across two floors of Hana House in downtown Brooklyn.
The New York Games, founded by Richard Ye in 2022, bills itself as “America’s largest board game night.” The community has hosted over 60,000 people in three years. Ye reportedly has 2,200+ board games in his apartment.
Casa Cipriani, the celebrity-favored Battery Park private members club, charges roughly $3,900 annual dues plus a $2,000 initiation fee (lower for under-30s). Zero Bond in NoHo runs about $4,400 annual with a $5,000 initiation fee. Both clubs have integrated chess salons, backgammon tournaments, and board game nights into their programming because the younger members are actively demanding analog activities.
At the higher end of the spectrum: the CORE Club ($15K-$100K initiation, $15K-$18K annual). Aman New York ($200K initiation, $15K annual). These clubs have private game rooms now because that’s what the new wealthy members want.
The pattern is clear. Gen Z is willing to spend real money to be in a room where nobody is looking at their phone.
Why this is happening
The honest answer is that the generation that grew up on screens is the generation most exhausted by them.
Multiple recent surveys have documented that Gen Z is drinking less, going to traditional bars less, and reporting higher loneliness than previous generations at the same age. The traditional “go out to a bar after work” model of urban socializing has lost significant ground. What’s replacing it is structured, intentional activities that produce face-to-face connection without the alcohol-and-noise overhead of nightlife.
“As screen fatigue reaches epidemic proportions and meditation apps fail to deliver the promised zen, people are rediscovering the satisfaction of tactile games that demand presence,” the Standard wrote in their Green Tile feature.
“Mahjong offers something apps cannot,” the same piece noted. “The weight of tiles in your hands, the satisfying click of a winning combination and the irreplaceable chemistry of reading opponents across a table.“
The Wikipedia entry on Green Tile Social Club frames it as part of “a new nightlife trend” where Gen Z is choosing intentional, skill-based, community-driven gatherings over open-bar parties.
The bigger analog rebellion
Board game clubs are just one slice of a much larger trend.
Vinyl record sales have grown for 18 straight years and now exceed CD sales by a wide margin. Physical book sales continue to grow even as e-book sales plateau. Film cameras are back, with Fujifilm’s instant cameras selling out repeatedly. Flip phones and “dumb phones” have become a recognizable Gen Z aesthetic, with brands like Light Phone selling out their minimalist devices to teenagers and twenty-somethings looking to reduce screen time.
Even traditional crafts have boomed. Knitting, embroidery, ceramics, baking, and woodworking have all seen significant Gen Z and Millennial adoption over the past five years. The Crumbl drink phenomenon we covered earlier this week sits in the same broader bucket — viral, in-person, shareable, tactile.
What unites all of these is the same underlying impulse. The generation that has spent its entire conscious life online is actively curating analog experiences that the previous generations took for granted.
For the older readers wondering why this is news: it is news because for most of the past 20 years, the assumption in tech and media was that digital products would continuously replace analog ones. That assumption is being actively undone by the consumers who were supposed to make it permanent.
What this means
For the tabletop industry, this is genuinely good news. Board game sales have grown every year since 2020. Kickstarter funding for tabletop games consistently outperforms most other categories. Companies like Asmodee, Stonemaier Games, and Czech Games Edition have been quietly building one of the strongest niches in modern entertainment.
For mainstream gaming, it’s a useful reminder that the digital-versus-physical question is not settled. The 25-year-olds paying $4,000 a year for a Casa Cipriani membership where they can play backgammon are not lost to PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch. They are demonstrating that there’s room in their lives for both.
For everyone watching cultural trends, the analog rebellion is real, it’s well-funded, and it’s not going away. The smartphone generation is choosing to put the smartphone down for the same reason their grandparents chose to read a book by the fire. Sometimes the older formats just work better.
In NYC right now, the cool people are paying real money to play board games with strangers. The receipts say the trend is just getting started.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.
Hat Tips:
New York Post / Lifestyle (June 1, 2026), primary reporting on the NYC old-school gaming club trend
NBC News (2024), verified Green Tile Social Club growth from 4,000 to 8,000 attendees and the “untz untz mahjong extravaganza” framing
Time Out New York / Morgan Carter (February 2026), verified profile of The New York Games founder Richard Ye including the 60,000+ attendee count and the 2,200 board game collection
Standard Hotels (June 2025), verified “social cure” mahjong feature including the screen fatigue framing
Wikipedia / Green Tile Social Club, verified founder details and event history including the May 2022 founding by Joanne Xu, Sarah Teng, Grace Liu, and Ernest Chan
Salon (May 31, 2025), verified private members club pricing including Zero Bond ($4,400/year + $5,000 initiation), Aman New York ($200K initiation + $15K annual), and CORE Club ($15K-$100K initiation)
Saez + Fromm Team / The Masterpiece (2021), verified Casa Cipriani $3,600/year membership context
Dandelion Chandelier (November 2025), updated verified Casa Cipriani fees ($2,000 initiation + $3,900 annual dues)
Fortune (July 2023), verified Casa Cipriani 4,000-person waitlist and Taylor Swift membership cancellation context
AOL / NYP / Michael Kaplan (2025), verified Tony Park Anto Korean Steakhouse $20K annual private poker club coverage
Wikipedia / CORE Club, verified $15K-$100K initiation fees and $15K-$18K annual dues
Wikipedia / Zero Bond, verified founding by Scott Sartiano in October 2020 and Wynn Las Vegas expansion 2026
Light Phone and Fujifilm corporate sales data, verified analog product trends
Industry data on vinyl record sales, physical book sales, and tabletop game category growth (multiple sources, 2020-2026)