The Viral App That Started With Videos of Nightclub Queues

Lots of businesses start modestly before adopting the model that brings widespread success. Netflix originally posted films out on DVD. Samsung traded dried fish, noodles and other foods. For twenty-somethings Josh Stewart and Callum Weatherall, it was as simple as filming outside their local pubs, bars and clubs in Sydney.

In October 2021, Covid lockdowns had just ended and people were itching to get back out and socialise – but capacity restrictions were creating lines everywhere. The duo cruised around Bondi on weekends, shooting the queues and estimating wait times for their Instagram account, Bondi Lines.

“We said when we started, ‘We’ll give it a month, see how it goes. Reassess if we’re seeing consistent traction and growth through followers’,” Stewart says. “After the first month, we were getting heaps of DMs from people asking, ‘What’s the Sheaf in Double Bay like?’ Or ‘What’s Surry Hills like for lines?’”The hyperlocal account took its first step towards becoming a city-wide guide to nightlife. Or, as the tagline says now: “The go-to for going out.”

The duo started driving further afield to report on lines in real-time. “It was like a release we’d announce,” Stewart says. “You know, ‘We’re doing Newtown tonight’, or Manly.” By December they’d amassed a modest 8000 followers.

But it took, ironically, another wave of Covid for the going-out guide to gain serious traction. With infections surging, so was demand for PCR tests and interest in the wait times at Sydney’s drive-through testing centres. A follower sent in a video showing the number of cars idling at a station in Bondi.“It got shitloads of engagement,” Stewart says.

The duo took that as a sign to keep using user-generated content, a small but crucial change that made the Lines model scalable and later led to national, then international, expansion. By the start of 2022, Bondi Lines had hit 40,000 followers.

“As the lines themselves became less of a pain point, only doing real-time updates was quite narrow in terms of what influences where you should go out. Organically, as those lines dropped off, we were getting questions about, ‘Hey, where should I go tonight?’” Stewart says. “In the mornings we’d be getting peppered with hundreds of DMs with intel and questions. We thought, ‘well, we should build something for that’.”

Stewart, a University of Sydney economics graduate, quit his job in finance. Weatherall, who finished a Bachelor of Arts at Wollongong University the month after Bondi Lines launched, left his role at recruitment agency Michael Page. The duo began approaching venues to ask what would be useful from their perspectives.

They landed on venues and promoters submitting footage from their parties in real-time, to be reposted on Lines’ channels alongside videos sent in by the wider community. Curation was suddenly a consideration. In addition to the timestamped videos of the atmosphere inside clubs, Lines began posting guides to upcoming events, recaps of the weekend just gone, ticket giveaways and the occasional meme.

While there’s now a consistent focus on dance clubs and events, larger concerts like the recent Oasis tour sometimes feature, alongside where to watch major sporting events like UFC or the Bledisloe Cup. “We get a lot of venues asking for promotion, but we don’t think it’s relevant, or we don’t think it’s good, so we don’t post it,” Stewart says. “We never compromise on what the user problem and value is.”

Just 12 months in, with a viable model established, Lines launched in Melbourne. Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Gold Coast, Canberra, Byron Bay, Newcastle and Wollongong followed. At the end of 2024, the duo released a slick mobile app serving these all cities, which also gave users discounted tickets and opportunities to skip certain queues. Ticket sellers pay Lines a commission for these leads, and users can unlock further discounts with a $9.90 per month subscription. Stewart and Weatherall say the app has been downloaded 83,000 times, and that Lines is now a $2.2 million business in terms of annual revenue.

“Our hypothesis is, information is scattered everywhere, especially with the nightlife stuff. There’s no central or easy way to know what’s good and what’s not,” Stewart says. “Because of that, people either just go to the same pub every time, or they just don’t even bother. They don’t want to risk rocking up somewhere shit. We’d like to think we give people the confidence and the assurance that it’s going to be good and therefore they go out more.”

Now comes Stewart and Weatherall’s biggest play yet: London, which launched in May, around the same time as Broadsheet. (It took us 16 years to get there – they’ve done it in four.)

“The culture lined closely with what we know in Australia, so it made sense for us to grow there next. We have our eyes set on New York next. We hope to be operating in 10 to 20 different cities in the next 24 months.”   

linesapp.co 

This story is part of Broadsheet’s special At the Club Issue, presented by Up, exploring club culture in 2025.