Tinder is not “running away” from the fact that more young singletons would rather meet in person than online, its boss has insisted as the dating app hopes real-life events can drive a resurgence in interest.

Spencer Rascoff, the chief executive of Tinder owner Match Group, said the app had undergone a turnaround after years of declining usership.

It comes as a new study conducted by the group found that 61% of single adults in the UK said they would like more of their social life to happen face to face.

This is despite 43% saying most of their socialising happens through a screen – rising to 51% of Gen Z respondents.

Just 4% of Gen Z met their most recent partner in the pub, bar or club, the survey found.

Mr Rascoff told the Press Association: “We have so much research that shows that people want to meet in person, at events, including from this new study.

“So rather than running away from that observation, we decided to run towards it, and embrace events by integrating them into the core Tinder experience.”

Tinder has launched in-person events in more than 50 cities around the world. The feature is not yet in the UK but is expected to launch in London.

The US-based boss said this has involved partnering with local operators who are already running events, and bringing them onto Tinder for singletons to connect with each other before or after.

“For example, a run club or a karaoke night or a matcha tasting or a singles meet-up in a dog park – these are events that already exist in the world,” he said.

“If they didn’t have the courage or the time to ask that person out at the run club or at the dog park, they can find them on Tinder afterwards, see their profile and message them safely.

“So basically we’re doing it in a scalable way.”

Mr Rascoff said other changes to the app – including improving the algorithm for recommending matches and rolling out new features – were “having the intended effect of turning the company around”.

He told the PA: “When I joined about two years ago, Tinder had seen almost around four years of declining usage year-on-year.

“Through the social road-map and a lot of hard work and improved marketing, we have almost entirely turned Tinder’s usage trends around.

“People sometimes say that dating apps are a thing of the past or they’re not popular anymore. I don’t believe that to be true.”

Match Group is expecting its annual revenues to total 885 million-895 million US dollars (£665-£673 million) for 2026, which would nonetheless be 2%-3% lower than the previous year.

But Tinder’s rival dating app Hinge, which is also owned by the group, has been growing with revenues rising by more than a fifth in the second quarter.

The apps make money from subscriptions which offer features like “unlimited likes” and “super likes” for paying members, as well as from advertising.

Mr Rascoff said it had not started putting events on Tinder “for the purpose of making money for Match Group”.

“We’ve done it to rejuvenate interest in the category of online dating,” he said, in a bid to attract more users who may eventually pay for premium features.