Tiger Tiger in Cardiff appears to only be available for private events after a turbulent few years which saw it close before the pandemic and re-open unexpectedly. After the club was bought by the Shoreditch Bar Group its closure was announced in March 2020 with management thanking former staff, DJs and customers for "being part of our journey... an incredible 15-plus years."
The next day a statement confirmed the site would rebrand as The Shoreditch and would be a bar and club modelled on a London venue owned by the group. But that was set to open on March 31, 2020, and a national lockdown in Wales followed.
Three years on the Tiger Tiger sign is still on the building and its website still prompts you to "book now" for one of four nights out on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
However, the page for private bookings doesn't allow you to select a date and the descriptions of the four club nights still include references to Covid Passes and don't show any current dates advertised. The most recent post on the club's Facebook page advertises a Halloween party in October 2022 while on Instagram there's an advert for private karaoke room bookings from January 2023.
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The most recent event on the booking page was on February 5 this year and since then there hasn't been any activity on the club's social media channels. But there wasn't a going-away party like when it closed the first time and no closure was formally announced.
Tiger Tiger changed the face of the city's nightlife and was once a place where you could easily spot players from the Welsh rugby team or members of the Gavin & Stacey cast grabbing a drink so we wanted to find out if it was actually still open – even if just for private bookings.
Our reporters phoned the bookings number on the club's website three times. On each occasion we were told that the club was closed both to the public and private bookings and on the third occasion a staff member confirmed it had been open after lockdown but closed several months ago.
A sign on the door says: "Tiger Tiger will only be open for events." It's unclear how long this sign has been there for or whether it references all events or just large-scale corporate ones but an email from Shoreditch Bar Group's corporate events department answered some of our questions.
A short statement read: "The venue is open for large-scale corporate events and ticketed events." It isn't clear how big these events would have to be in order to go ahead nor why we were told on the phone that the club was closed.
Shoreditch Bar Group owns a number of bars and clubs, many of them in Shoreditch itself, and the branch of Tiger Tiger near Leicester Square which appears to still be open. A brochure on the group's website advertises its venues for private hire including Tiger Tiger Cardiff and its five rooms with a total capacity of 1,670.
The brochure advertises corporateevents@opusleisure.com or 02033259739 as the point of contact for private bookings. Opus Leisure, Shoreditch Bar Group, and Novus Leisure appear to be closely linked and share a corporate brochure from 2022 and a booking phone line.
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