Recession-proof fun: what we buy when money is tight
When budgets shrink, the joy doesn't disappear — it changes shape. Four years of data show South Africans cutting the big stuff and clinging to small, regular, affordable hits of pleasure: a casino night, a bucket of fried chicken, an energy drink. The economics of staying sane.
The 60-second version
- 🎰 Casinos are the ultimate recession-proof category — the single most-searched leisure keyword in the dataset, steady at ~3.3 million searches a month.
- 🍗 Affordable indulgence held firm: fried chicken, energy drinks and food trucks all grew through a cost-of-living squeeze.
- 🏠 "Cheap party ideas" collapsed −52% — not from austerity, but because South Africans stopped doing budget home parties and went back out.
- 💄 It's the lipstick effect: when the big rewards get unaffordable, the small ones get sacred.
Economists have a name for the lipstick effect: in hard times, people stop buying the expensive reward and double down on the small, affordable one. You skip the holiday but keep the takeaway. You cancel the big party but never miss your Friday flutter. South Africa's last four years are a near-perfect case study — a country under real financial pressure that refused to stop spending on joy, but got very strategic about which joy.
The unkillable category
Why the casino never blinks
Of every leisure keyword we track, none is bigger or steadier than the casino. Through inflation spikes, interest-rate hikes and a cost-of-living crunch, interest barely wobbled — the textbook definition of recession-proof demand. Nationally, South Africans wagered over R1.1-trillion in a single year, with gambling revenue up more than 25%.1
Monthly "casino" search demand, with trend line.
The takeaway: Casino interest holds remarkably steady at a very high level — the signature of a category people treat as a fixed cost of feeling alive.
Gambling is the purest "small, repeatable hope" purchase: low entry price, instant escape, the promise of a turnaround. Exactly the kind of spending that hardens, not softens, when times are tough.
"Casino" searches per million people, by province.
The takeaway: Gauteng leads decisively, with the Western Cape second and KZN well behind.
It tracks the real industry: Gauteng generates the single largest provincial share of casino gaming revenue in the country.2 No beach, no mountain — built entertainment fills the gap.
Affordable indulgence
Small treats, sacred treats
The second recession-proof pattern is the affordable indulgence — comfort food and small pick-me-ups that cost little but deliver a reliable hit. These categories didn't just survive the squeeze; several quietly grew through it.
Four-year change across comfort and treat foods.
The takeaway: Fried chicken, loaded fries and other cheap indulgences held or grew — the edible version of the lipstick effect.
Comfort food is emotional infrastructure during stress: cheap, fast, familiar and dopamine-rich. When the future feels uncertain, a R60 reward you can have tonight beats a R6,000 one you have to plan.
Monthly demand for energy drinks vs takeaways & street food.
The takeaway: Both climb steadily — small, repeatable purchases that double as affordable rituals.
An energy drink isn't just caffeine; it's a R25 moment of "this is mine". The street-food and food-truck rise is the same instinct scaled up to the weekend.
The thing that actually fell
The collapse of the budget home party
Here's the twist that catches people out. The searches that collapsed weren't the indulgences — they were the budget cues. "Cheap party ideas", "DIY decorations", "party ideas at home": all down hard. That looks like austerity until you remember what else happened in this period.
Four-year change for cheap / DIY / at-home party searches.
The takeaway: Cheap party ideas −52%, DIY decorations and at-home party searches all down sharply.
This isn't people giving up on fun — it's the opposite. As load-shedding ended, South Africans stopped trying to manufacture a cheap party at home and simply went back out to the pub, the shisanyama and the casino.3
Combined demand for budget signals vs luxury signals.
The takeaway: Both the bargain-basement and the top-shelf "occasion" categories softened — the squeeze hit the extremes, not the affordable middle.
The survivors live in the sweet spot: not the cheapest, not the fanciest, but the small, regular, reliable treat. That's where a stressed economy spends its joy.
| Behaviour | What happened | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The flutter | Casino steady, very high | Cheap hope, instant escape |
| The comfort meal | Fried chicken, loaded fries up | Affordable, familiar dopamine |
| The daily treat | Energy drinks up | Tiny, repeatable ritual |
| The budget DIY party | Collapsed −52% | Replaced by going back out |
| The luxury occasion | Softened | First thing cut under pressure |
The verdict
A country that refuses to stop celebrating
The most striking thing in the data isn't what South Africans cut — it's what they protected. Through a genuinely hard stretch, they guarded the small joys with something close to defiance: the casino visit, the takeaway, the energy drink, the cheap night out. The big party got smaller and the splurge got rarer, but the appetite for a good time never broke. If anything, the harder the times, the more sacred the small treat became.
You can measure a country's stress by what it cuts. You can measure its spirit by what it refuses to.
- Source. Aggregated South African search demand across food, drink and leisure keywords, monthly, June 2022 – May 2026.
- Growth. First 12 months vs the most recent 12. Province figures are normalised per million residents (Census 2022).
- Caveat. Search interest is intent, not spend. "Casino" searches include online and information-seeking, not only physical visits.
References & further reading
Figures are PartyTrends' own analysis of the search-demand dataset described above. Sources below corroborate the wider economic context.
- TimesLIVE, South Africans wagered R1.1-trillion in local gambling in a year (Dec 2024) — gambling GGR up 25.7%. timeslive.co.za
- National Gambling Board, National Gambling Statistics — Gauteng holds the largest provincial share of casino GGR. ngb.org.za
- Daily Maverick, Eskom marks 300 days without load shedding (Jan 2025) — the going-out recovery. dailymaverick.co.za
- Statistics South Africa, Consumer Price Index — the cost-of-living backdrop. statssa.gov.za
- PartyTrends, Cost of Things Over Time & Methodology. partytrends.co.za/party-economy