It’s Thursday night and London office workers are letting off steam down the pub knowing the weekend is in sight. But instead of chatting over a drink they are smashing ping pong balls over a net.

The venue is Bounce, a ping pong bar on the fringes of the financial district, and the number of stray balls in the air gives the impression that somewhere in the room a lottery draw machine is misfiring. The bar even employs runners to dash among the rows of tables scooping up balls with oversized fishing nets.

“I love the atmosphere. You can smash the ball around and nobody cares,” says Dan Wright, an accountant on a work night out. “If you get hit in the face it doesn’t matter. It’s all part of the fun.”

It used to be the most exercise drinkers got was the trip to the bar for another round, but Bounce is among a new breed of bars and nightclubs changing the way Britons socialise by combining drinks with activities like table tennis, crazy golf and even axe-throwing.

These new bars are seen as a positive trend for the UK’s beleaguered pub and nightclub scene which has suffered as Britons avoid expensive rounds – the average price of a pint of beer in Britain is now £3.60 – by buying discounted beer and wine alongside their weekly supermarket shop.

Since the early 1970s nearly 30,000 pubs have called last orders for good with the 2007 smoking ban and the 2008 recession also blamed for the sector’s declining popularity. The total is now down to fewer than 47,000, according to the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), with 21 typically closing every week.

As well as filling a gap in the UK pub market, Bounce is targeting global expansion with plans for 20 sites. The company was founded by leisure entrepreneur Adam Breeden, who was also behind bowling venture All Star Lanes.

Other brands are also springing up. “Ping pong is quite active and competitive. I associate darts and pool with fat guys drinking pints,” says Mikey Televantou, head of marketing at Sink Pong, a table tennis venue in London’s trendy East End. “Sometimes people turn up in their shorts and T-shirts at lunchtime, but it’s mostly people in their work clothes.”

Beer and table tennis sounds like a dangerous combination for the uncoordinated but Televantou says accidents happen very occasionally: “It’s gentler than competitive ping pong but sometimes people do slip or overstretch.”

These alternative nights out are part of the “experience economy” – a phrase used to describe a shift in consumer behaviour from buying things to doing things. Official data shows that households spend less on clothes and food but more on holidays, cars, entertainment and eating out.

“From a consumer standpoint they want more from their entertainment budget,” says Thomas Rose, who heads up the leisure and restaurant team at property firm Cushman & Wakefield. “There hasn’t been a great deal of innovation in the leisure sector for the last 10-15 years and now we are seeing a wave of new concepts.”

Pubs that have tailored their beer offer with quality cask ales and trendy craft brands have been been able to cash in on the craft beer revolution. Rose points to other bars such as Flight Club, a fledgling London chain that claims to have reinvented darts with dart-tracking technology, as putting a fresh twist on pub culture.

“When you think of darts you tend too think of old men but when I went, 50% of the crowd were 18-35-year-old women,” says Rose. “It’s not slow and boring because you don’t have to do the adding up – the tech does it for you.”

There is also a burgeoning crazy-golf scene with outfits such as Junkyard Golf Club and Swingers proving a big hit with millennials keen on Instagram worthy nights out.

“The days when people were content to go to the pub and just have a chat have gone,” said Chris Legh, one of the co-founders of Junkyard Golf Club, which is opening a third venue in Oxford next month. “People want to be engrossed in an activity rather than sitting across a pub table ignoring their friends and looking at their mobiles.”

Rose says his property firm is being contacted all the time by entrepreneurs with “crazy” bar themes up their sleeves. “But if you had said to me 10 years ago people would be opening table tennis bars I would have thought you were mad,” he adds. “Pubs are having to adapt to changing tastes.”

But if you would prefer the kind of pub where there is no risk of a ping pong or golf ball plopping into your glass, you are not alone. “It feels quite American in here with the loud music and modern furniture, says Tarik Miri, a Belgian fintech worker also on a night out at Bounce. “I love traditional British pubs. They are friendly and I like the mindset – the wooden tables and old school feeling.”