Two minutes. One mate. A room full of singles.
Pitch Your Mate
You know exactly why your mate is a catch. They're hopeless at saying it themselves. So you get on stage, put up five slides, and sell them to a pub full of people who came out specifically to be sold to.
What a pitch-your-mate night actually is
The format goes by a few names. Pitch your mate. Pitch my mate. Pitch your single friend. A wingman night, or a wingwoman night, depending on who's holding the microphone. They all describe the same thing: instead of a profile, your introduction is delivered live, out loud, by someone who has known you for years and can be trusted to be funny about it.
At a Date My Mate night it runs in two halves. The first half is the pitches. Mates take the mic in turn, two minutes each, slides behind them, and make the case for their single friend to a room of people who are all there for the same reason. The second half is the mingle — the bar reopens properly, the room dissolves, and you go and talk to whoever you liked the sound of. Most of what happens on a Date My Mate night happens in that second half. The pitches are what give you something to walk up and say.
It is not speed dating. There are no timed rotations, no buzzer, and nobody is going to make you sit opposite a stranger for four minutes. And it is not an app — nothing here is sorted by an algorithm, because the sorting was already done by a friend who knows what you're actually like.
How to write a pitch that lands
Five beats, two minutes. The best pitches on our nights have all followed roughly this shape.
- 1
Open with the hook
One sentence that makes the room look up. Not their job title. The thing you'd actually lead with if you were introducing them at a party — the odd hobby, the disastrous story, the thing they're weirdly good at.
- 2
Green flags
Three, maximum. Specific ones. "Kind" means nothing; "drove four hours to help me move a couch and didn't complain once" means everything. Show the evidence, don't list the adjective.
- 3
One honest red flag
This is the beat that makes the whole thing land. A pitch with no flaws reads like an ad and the room switches off. Pick something true, small, and funny — the terrible taste in music, the inability to be on time.
- 4
Who they're looking for
Be concrete enough that the right person in the room recognises themselves. Vague gets you nothing. This is the part people are listening hardest to.
- 5
Close and get off
Two minutes goes fast. End on the line you want people repeating at the bar afterwards, then hand the mic back. Overrunning is the single most common mistake.
What sinks a pitch
- • Reading out a CV. Nobody has ever fallen for a list of achievements.
- • Inside jokes. If it needs three sentences of setup, cut it.
- • Going over time. The room forgives almost anything except the fourth minute.
- • Being mean. The red flag should make your mate laugh too, not wish they'd stayed home.
Being someone's wingman for a night
Being a wingman used to mean nudging your mate at a bar and hoping. On a wingman night you get a microphone, a stage, a slide deck and a room of people who turned up specifically to listen. It is the same job with considerably better equipment.
You don't have to be single to do it. Plenty of wingmen and wingwomen at our nights are very much taken and come purely to deliver the pitch and enjoy the evening — the only person who needs to be single is the mate you're pitching.
Pitch the friend who'd never sign up for this on their own. The people who get the most out of a wingman night are the ones who come off badly in photographs and brilliantly in person — that gap is precisely what this format closes. The bit wingmen consistently say they didn't expect is how much lands afterwards: once you've pitched, the whole room knows who your mate is, so walking up to someone stops being a cold approach and becomes a follow-up.
Which ticket do I need to pitch?
MATE/DATE is the standard one: you pitch, your single mate gets pitched, and it covers entry for both of you.
DATE/DATE is for two single mates who are going to pitch each other — two pitches, one each way, entry for two.
Mingle is solo entry with no pitching at all, if you just want to watch and meet people. About half the room every night is on one of these.
Every ticket includes your first two drinks. Live prices and what's left sit on each event page.
Upcoming events
Be the date. Pitch a mate. Or just mingle.
Date My Mate @
The Chippo Hotel
Pitch spots
- Women:
- 5 left
- Men:
- 7 left
Mingle spots
- Women:
- 35 left
- Men:
- 33 left
- Date
- · 6:00 pm
- Location
- Sydney · Chippendale
- Age range
- Ages 22–38-ish
Date My Mate @
The Greenwood Hotel
Pitch spots
- Women:
- 9 left
- Men:
- 10 left
Mingle spots
- Women:
- 15 left
- Men:
- 15 left
- Date
- · 6:00 pm
- Location
- Sydney · North Sydney
- Age range
- Ages 25–40-ish
Date My Mate @
Dee Why Bowls Club
Pitch spots
- Women:
- 7 left
- Men:
- 10 left
Mingle spots
- Women:
- 23 left
- Men:
- 26 left
- Date
- · 6:00 pm
- Location
- Sydney · Northern Beaches
- Age range
- Ages 35–50-ish
Pitch your mate — FAQ
What is a pitch-your-mate night?
A live event where friends take turns on stage pitching their single mates to a room full of other singles, usually with a short slide deck. The pitch covers why that person is a catch — green flags, red flags and who they're looking for. After the pitches, everyone mingles over drinks and talks to whoever they liked the sound of. At Date My Mate the pitches take up about half the night and the mingle takes the other half.
How long is a pitch?
Two minutes at a Date My Mate night. That's roughly five or six slides. It sounds short and it is — the discipline is what keeps the room's attention across a dozen pitches in a row. If you've got a DATE/DATE ticket, that's two 2-minute pitches, one each way.
Do I need slides?
Yes, and they're most of the fun. A short deck about your mate — photos, a chart nobody asked for, the receipts. We send pitch templates when you book so you're not starting from a blank page, and Date My Mate reviews and approves every deck before the night.
What if I'm terrible at public speaking?
Almost everyone who pitches says that beforehand. It's a pub, not a conference: the room is on your side, everyone has a drink, and the slides carry a lot of the load. Two minutes is over before nerves get a chance to settle in.
Can my mate see the pitch before I give it?
Yes. Slides are built collaboratively, so the person being pitched has a say in what goes on the screen about them, and Date My Mate approves the final version before the night. The embarrassment is meant to be affectionate, not a stitch-up.
Is this the same as a wingman night?
Yes. Wingman night, wingwoman night, pitch your mate, pitch my mate, pitch your single friend — they're all names for one format, where a friend gets on stage and makes the case for their single mate to a room. The only real difference between the names is which side they describe: the wingman doing the pitching, or the mate getting pitched.
Who is the wingman at a Date My Mate night?
Your MATE — the wingman or wingwoman who knows you best. They build a short deck, take the mic for two minutes on your green flags and red flags, and then do the introductions during the mingle that you're too shy to do yourself. That last part is the bit people underrate. They come in on a MATE/DATE ticket, which covers entry for both of you.
Where can I go to a pitch-your-mate night?
Date My Mate runs them at pubs around Sydney now, with Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Hobart on the roadmap. Tickets are on datemymate.au — we don't sell through Eventbrite or Humanitix, so a similarly named listing on those platforms is somebody else's night. Other operators run their own versions around Australia under names like pitch my mate, wingmate and date my mate; they aren't affiliated with us.
Also worth a look: nights in your city or what's on in Sydney.
Get on the list
Whether you want to pitch a friend, get pitched, or have a venue — we want to hear from you.