Comedy Town Hall: Bert Kreischer, Fortune Feimster & More Dish On Trends In Booming Stand-Up Business

Matt Grobar
·11 min read
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If the film and television industries have been challenged like never before in a year of double strikes, in the world of comedy, the story is very different.

In truth, stand-up has never been bigger, with one story after another rolling out of comedians setting records for attendance and viewership. Take Nate Bargatze, for example, who earlier this year set an Amazon streaming record with his special Hello World, before going on to sell a record number of tickets to an April show at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena, and bringing SNL its highest-rated episode of the season. Or Matt Rife, a young up-and-comer with 10+ years under his belt, who hit the upper echelons of comedy seemingly overnight after blowing up on TikTok, selling out a global tour encompassing some 600,000 tickets in less than 48 hours, before going on to land his own forthcoming Netflix special, Matt Rife: Natural Selection. Also operating at the highest level is Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias, who after becoming the first comic to sell out Dodger Stadium, went back for a second show.

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According to German data gathering platform Statista, yearly revenue stemming from the comedy event market in the United States has increased from $1.7B in 2017 to $3.1B in 2023. Pollstar’s top touring comic of 2022 was Sebastian Maniscalco at over $44.9M, and this isn’t to speak of the money that stand-ups now stand to make from podcasts, film and TV, brand deals, merchandise sales, and more.

What this all says to comedian Trevor Wallace, whose debut special Pterodactyl debuts on Prime Video November 14th, is that stand-up comedy is cool again. “I feel like 10, 15 years ago you would kind of go, ‘Oh, there’s comedy on the cruise. We can stop by,'” he says. “But now it’s like all these clubs are packed every night.”

Fellow up-and-comer Fahim Anwar, who unveiled his latest special Hat Trick on YouTube last summer, finds that the way consumers are now engaging with comics is akin to the way many engage with their favorite musicians. “The way people were excited to discover bands, people are excited to discover new comedians,” he explains, “and that never existed before.”

Deadline caught up with Wallace, Anwar, and six other prominent comedians last night at an event at the Hollywood Improv, in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Improv comedy clubs. Below, they outline their thoughts on what has led comedy to this point and the most interesting facets of the way their business is functioning now.

FACTORS BEHIND THE COMEDY BOOM

JEREMIAH WATKINS: I think we get so stuck zoning out, looking at our phones, or in our Netflix queue, being spat stuff in our face over and over, that it’s refreshing to see somebody do something live and in the moment that maybe never will be repeated again.

FAHIM ANWAR: It feels beaten to death, like, “Oh, you can’t say anything anymore.” But there is a little bit of truth to [that], especially in the workplace and stuff. People just feel like they’re walking on eggshells, and comedy is the last place where you can really just be a little reckless because it’s a safe space for ideas and fun, and no one really means what they say. It’s an experiment. It’s ideas fight club. The intent is to make people laugh. So as things get a little restricted, it inflates the comedy scene because it’s exciting. Where else can you do that?

FORTUNE FEIMSTER: I think also, there’s a lot of bad stuff happening all over the world at any given moment. People need to laugh probably more than they have in a long time.

I think we also found a new appreciation for it when everything shut down in the pandemic. Live performance had never shut down like that, and so I think it made comics appreciate it more and we were like, “Oh, we want to be out there as much as possible.” We’re all getting something we need out of it.

BERT KREISCHER: I think podcasting changed the game, podcasting and social media. But when they kind of clicked, I think people fell in love with comics’ voices. I think people got to hear you and know you, and feel like they’re your friends, and that’s why people loved Roseanne [Barr] and Tim [Allen] and all of them. Because they felt like they knew them.

Over the last decade, podcasts have become increasingly meaningful to comics, as both a creative outlet, a means of bypassing gatekeepers, and a financial lifeline….

KREISCHER: During the pandemic, it saved our lives. I mean, it saved my life. But I think podcasting for comics gives them control of their own narrative of how they want to be represented to their fans. Look at someone like Theo Von. He’s always been funny as s**t, but if you leave it up to Comedy Central, they may not get it and they may edit him weird. But Theo knows how Theo’s the funniest. So he sits in front of a goddamn camera and just Theos it for an hour, and people love him to death. I think it gave a lot of people a way to use their own voice.

ANWAR: It’s exciting because there’s a lot of great talent that just never got the spotlight through traditional [avenues], and now they have the internet, and then you have these younger people who are coming up with this opportunity, so it’s sort of compounded.

ANDREW SANTINO: [Podcasts] gave us another platform for people maybe that aren’t huge stand-up fans to get into stand-up. It’s been the greatest thing that’s ever happened in my career.

The ability of comedians to monetize, and to establish a direct relationship with fans through podcasts, has only expanded, as the shows have been transformed into events and taken out on the road, as with Santino and Bobby Lee’s Bad Friends tour…

SANTINO: We do an hour of stand-up and then we do an hour of interactive stuff with fans to connect them more to this thing again. So it breaks this, “You don’t get to touch us, see us, feel us” type of thing. And now we’re like, they’re one with us a little bit…And they do touch us, feel us.

As connections between comic and fan have grown, so have those between performers…

RICK GLASSMAN: For me, podcasting has offered a reason to socialize with people. Just as a person with OCD, I had difficulty doing things. When I started coming up, being around other comedians, as we were forced to be together, waiting to go on stage, it made us friends. Now, I do shows and I leave, but the podcast is an excuse. Once a week, you have to have a long conversation with somebody, and I have developed and grown such great friendships from it. It’s the most connection I get in a week.

KREISCHER: I’ve got to say, Joe Rogan was the one that was like, “F**k everyone hating each other. We can help each other.” When I started… everything was an audition to get a development deal, to get a hold deal, so everyone was kind of sh*tty behind their backs to each other. It was a weird “We’re not friends, but we work together” energy.

Then, when podcasting showed up, Joe started putting people over and being like, “Yo, this is Bert, he’s funny as s**t. Go see him live.” And all of a sudden everyone’s like, what? “Yo, Ari, do you want to be on my podcast? Joey, do you want to be on my podcast? Hey Tommy, you should start a podcast.” And everyone cares about each other. We’re upfront about how much money we make to each other, what the clubs pay. We talk about ad sales on podcasts. It’s very different than when I started, and you couldn’t get someone to help you get passed at the Cellar.

For some, the stratospheric rise of podcasts as a format has fostered further questions about the cultural relevance of late night. The sense is that this is a space that needs a reinvention for the streaming age…

FEIMSTER: What does it look like going into this new era? Podcasts are interviewing everybody all the time. So what they did that was unique, now everyone’s doing in some fashion.

ANWAR: Late night’s great. I grew up with it, but it did feel a little more antiquated after the pandemic, right? There’s something about it. [Covid] kind of accelerated [its descent], but it’s still fun. I don’t know. It’s historic. It’s like baseball at this point.

In contrast to film and TV, the audience for comedy is more so platform agnostic, meaning that comics can build a name, brand and following for themselves, whether their specials debuts on Netflix, YouTube or Veeps — so long as it’s good...

ANWAR: People don’t really remember where they saw it. They just remember whether they liked it or not, and especially with the younger generation, they don’t care whether it was on Starz, HBO, or YouTube. It shows on their TV. You know what I mean? It’s almost like they forget how they fired it up, really. Whereas we grew up with these distinctions of platforms.

The ever-increasing prevalence of stand-up in the digital space, whether on YouTube, TikTok or Instagram reels, has brought the medium into the mainstream more than ever before. Long considered (or considering themselves) the black sheep of the entertainment family, comics as of September have their very own category at the Golden Globes, joining those at the Grammys and Emmys...

WATKINS: I think it’s way overdue and I think it’s something that’ll be another accolade that comedians will strive for. It’s just nice to be recognized for something that a lot of people in the industry, and surrounding the industry, consider to be one of the hardest things to do, or their biggest fear is to even get on stage and do something like that. So, it’s cool that it’s being acknowledged in a different way.

KREISCHER: As comics…it’s like whenever we take ourselves serious, people go, “Really?” So I think it’s cool as s**t that we’re included and getting looked at, even in that light. I’m so excited to see the list [of nominees] for the first time. I’m going to watch the f***ing Golden Globes.

If conditions in the world are ripe for the huge movement right now in comedy, it’s not to say there are no associated challenges...

ANWAR: It is weird. Back in the day, there were gatekeepers, and then now, the gatekeeper is the algorithm. I joke that I create stuff and I’m like, “Is this good enough, Algo Gods?” So now, we’re beholden to the algorithm, and we create content hoping that it catches a wave.

SLOAN: Social media is a toddler who’s always hungry. It’s a little kid that always wants more, more, more, more, more. The thing that makes [comedy] big and the thing that makes it hard is the exact same thing. You have to be posting, you always have to be announcing what you’re doing, and doing little videos.

ANWAR: [Having] something to feed your fans regularly is more important than making Dunkirk every [now and again]. You know, the era of preciousness is over. If you could put something out weekly that’s 80% there, that’s better than 99 or a hundred percent every three months, and that was a paradigm shift for me.

Amidst a globalization of comedy, comedians are also now on the road more than ever, for better or worse...

FEIMSTER: I don’t think people have toured to this kind of capacity. I mean, at the end of this tour, I’ll have done like hundred cities, and Tom Segura, I was watching his special. He did like 170 cities. It’s never been that global, but that’s a part of the streaming world of it, the YouTube world.

With the proliferation at streamers of relatively short-term licensing deals for stand-up specials, young comics must entertain a trade-off. Do they retain rights to their material and see it be exposed to an audience the size of which they’ve never seen, while making little money off their work up front? Or is there something to be said for self-releasing?

FEIMSTER: I think people have to decide what they want to do, what they want to invest in. Are they okay with paying for the production costs?

This business is all about looking down the road. What’s the big picture? If your big picture is to make money off a special, then that’s not the way for you to go. But if your big picture is, “I want all these eyes on it, I want to sell tickets,” then that’s an option. So it really is up to the comic, as far as what their kind of roadmap is.

SANTINO: You want to own your own material. I think the music industry taught us one thing about owning your own IP: You’re licensing out your stuff instead of being…Not to talk s**t, but yeah. Comedy Central, for a long time, you were kind of a slave to their game, and that worked at the time. But now, it’s changing for the better. So, people get to own their own stuff, distribute it how they want, and that only opens us up for more opportunities.

Whereas a movie or sitcom deal was once the be-all end-all for comics, that’s not necessarily the case any longer…

ANWAR: I’ve been doing stand-up and been alive long enough to see it change. It’s weird because the blueprint was the same for so long, and things have changed at light speed in the last 10, 15 years. And I think it’s liberating.

I think it behooves the stand-up comedian because back in the day, you had to be the wacky neighbor on a sitcom, or have a sitcom for people to come see you do stand-up on the road. Whereas now, that’s not the case, and it’s almost a hindrance. I have friends and stuff who were on sitcoms and they couldn’t draw on the road, just because [pop culture] is so fractured and segmented. Now, things are getting very, very niche, so acting has become less integral to our job.

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