Tired of swiping? ‘Pitch dating’ is the new way to find love. What is it?

Finding love in the era of dating apps often feels like running on a treadmill—you’re moving, but getting nowhere. Swiping left, swiping right, matching, unmatching, and repeating the cycle until the whole thing starts to feel more like a chore than a chance at romance. Been there, done that?

But what if your friends took over the matchmaking process? Instead of curating the perfect bio or agonising over what to say in a DM, what if someone who knows you best made your case—live, in front of an audience?

Welcome to Pitch Dating, a refreshingly fun and quirky trend that is bringing real-world charm back to modern dating—one PPT at a time. Here’s a closer look.

Too tired to swipe?

If dating apps feel more exhausting than exciting, you’re not imagining it.

A 2024 Forbes Health/OnePoll survey on dating trends found that swiping is leading to widespread fatigue. On average, users spend 51 minutes a day on dating apps, with women spending slightly more time (52 minutes) than men (49 minutes).

With endless profiles, mixed signals, and the constant fear of deception, many singles feel lost in the digital dating world—almost as if they’re disposable.

The survey revealed that 78 per cent of respondents felt emotionally, mentally, or physically drained by dating apps at least sometimes, if not often or always. The biggest culprit? Struggling to find a genuine connection, with 40 per cent of users citing this as their main frustration.

Other common reasons included disappointment in people (35 per cent), feelings of rejection (27 per cent), repetitive conversations (24 per cent), exhaustion from swiping (22 per cent), and the sheer amount of time spent on apps (21 per cent).

There’s also the pressure to look a certain way, which one in five users admitted to feeling. Meanwhile, 18 per cent said they were overwhelmed by maintaining profiles and juggling multiple apps at once.

This growing dissatisfaction is reflected in user numbers. A 2023 Cluster17 survey Tinder’s monthly active users dropped from 75 million in 2021 to 56 million in 2024. Bumble, another major player in the dating app world, has also seen over 90 per cent of its market value wiped out in recent years.

Clearly, many people are looking for something different.

Also read: World Mental Health Day: How using dating apps can be bad for you

Enter pitch dating

Inspired by startup pitch events, Pitch Dating puts a unique spin on traditional matchmaking. According to Pitch-a-Friend’s website, the event is designed to “celebrate friendship by allowing friends to give short slide presentations about their remarkable single friends to a lively audience of available singles.”

Mahima, a finance professional, was introduced at one such event by two friends.

The first jokingly pointed out that at just five feet tall, she would “always be looking up to you.” The second hyped up her cooking skills and revealed a fun fact—Mahima apparently needs at least eight shots to get drunk (legend!), reports Cosmopolitan.

Meanwhile, in Paris, another event reported by French newspaper Le Monde saw Celena, 25, use a Spotify Wrapped-style Canva presentation to pitch her friend Gowtha, 28, a cafe manager who’s been single for three years.

Her 15-slide pitch painted Gowtha as a gym enthusiast and a true gourmand. She highlighted some of his quirks—“crashing his mates’ dates,” “explaining his Sri Lankan origins,” and “driving, but no eating in the car.”

“In an app, you’re the one selling yourself, so you can say what you want. But when a friend introduces you, it brings out the weird bits. That’s what’s cool: You don’t want someone who’s perfect. It’s also a good way of breaking the ice. There’s no longer the awkward aspect of the date,” Celena explained.

At the end of her speech, a microphone was passed around for audience questions. Curious attendees jumped in asking questions about Gowtha: “What’s your zodiac sign?” asked one. “Which song best defines your love life?” quipped another.

So far, only three couples have officially formed since these events started in France, according to the organiser, who closely tracks their success.

Where did this novel idea come from?

The credit goes to Melissa Schipke and Ariana Brogan, two friends who launched the trend in 2022 with one goal—to take the pressure off the person looking for love and shift it onto their friends instead.

While Pitch-a-Friend has taken off in the US, its core rule remains clear: this is not a roast. The event encourages kindness, ensuring pitches are lighthearted but positive.

According to Laurie Dutheil, the organiser of Pitch Dating events in Paris, the concept taps into something deeper:

“It’s a way of discovering people other than as an identity reduced to pixels, a profile with criteria onto which you project an idea or a fantasy. Many people yearn for luck, for a chance meeting, as if it were written.”

With input from agencies