Could Integrating Stand-Up Comedy In Your Entertainment/Dining Venue Be Worth It?

Did you know that at least for the USA, the number of comedy clubs have increased by 4.7% alone in 2022? Did you know that stand-up comedy as a form of entertainment has greatly increased in many authoritarian countries such as China and Pakistan?

The previous informations are just a few interesting facts about stand-up comedy but here’s more, in the USA again, stand-up comedy started rising again from its low of US$ 350 million market size in 2014 up to it’s peak in 2019 of up to almost US$ 450 million market size.

This nosedived during the pandemic of 2020 to US$ 260 million but is now up again to US$ 325 million in 2022 and there is no doubt that this figure would continue to grow in the near future.

As you can see, stand-up comedy is on the rise again after its rise was greatly interrupted by the pandemic. These numbers alone prove the popularity of stand-up comedy as a form of entertainment for people.

If you’re thinking of booking the likes of popular comedians like Joe Rogan, think again. He earns a minimum of US$ 100,000 per episode of his popular podcast: ”The Joe Rogan Experience”.

So, if you’re an average entertainment/dining venue, your obvious best choice are the second-tier, struggling, and newbie comedians who would be willing to do stand-up comedy for a more modest amount and even for free.

It is to be noted that second-tier and even struggling comedians are paid so little these days by entertainment/dining venues that they make less than the minimum wage after all their expenses have been deducted.

Did you know that there are even comedians who receive so little payment for their stand-up comedy jobs that they are forced to sleep in their cars if the entertainment/dining venue does not compensate them for lodging costs.

Newbie comedians have it even worse. Many are not expected to get paid by the entertainment/dining venue at all. For these entertainment/dining venues, the public exposure they give to newbie comedians are payment enough.

Undoubtedly, there are a lot of very small entertainment/dining venues who really don’t have a budget to entertain their customers. This is the reason why many good and not so good entertainment/venues lure comedians to perform in exchange for so-called public exposure.

But there is merit to this. Aspiring comedians are usually not really funny during the early stages of their career that they need a lot of practice before a live test audience, and entertainment/dining venues are in a good position to provide this live test audience.

There are even many already popular comedians who use live test audiences to polish a new comedy routine. This just proves that entertainment/dining venues have merit in offering this kind of “service” or “commodity” to comedians.

The applause and audience reaction would indeed be a good gauge for the comedian to see if their comedy routine is successful. Entertainment/dining venues can even provide the audience with feedback facilities where they can inform the comedian their weakness for example.

Lastly, a very small entertainment/dining venue does indeed enable a comedian to perform before a very small live audience which if they perfect, can lead to lucratively performing in much larger entertainment/dining venues.

Firstly, since very small entertainment/dining venues have very little if no budget for advertising, the best way that they can advertise their stand-up comedy entertainment is thru social media. A Stand-up comedy entertainment offering can even make their social media page successful.

The entertainment/venue can print out physical and virtual tickets just to gauge the level of public interest in their stand-up comedy entertainment offering. They can even offer promos like free drinks and meals for each ticket that is sold. A good way to increase profits.

Stand-up comedy doesn’t require a lot of props unlike a band performance which requires several musical instruments and audio accessories. It only requires an area of the venue to be well lighted with a microphone as the main accessory.

Speaking of microphones, it is highly recommended that the venue has backup microphones just in case the main one malfunctions. Very small venues can get by with averagely priced microphones so having backup microphones is only a small additional cost.

Prepare signs. Put signs outside your venue for passersby to know you offer stand-up comedy entertainment. Put signs also at the backdrop of your stand-up comedy set. This way, if anyone posts the show in social media, the name of your venue would be in social media too.

In the entertainment industry, it is a well known fact that entertainers do fail to come to their shows for various reasons. They could be stuck in traffic, sick, found a better gig somewhere else or are just plain scared of performing. Even veteran entertainers do this!

The first thing you should do to avoid entertainers cancelling out of their shows is to always be in frequent contact with them even up to the final minutes leading up to the show. This builds up commitment from the entertainer and you would also be able to check for signs of trouble.

Ask your other performers to prepare for a shorter and longer timeframe. This way, you stretch the performance time of your entertainers for shorter, if there’s too many of them, to longer, if there’s too few of them.

You and your staff should be prepared to perform yourselves if there is an entertainer shortfall in your venue. Who knows, you or your staff might just have a knack of entertaining people that you don’t need outside entertainers to perform in your entertainment/dining venue.

Lastly: Ask for volunteers. You could have an impromptu stand-up comedy contest should there be an entertainer shortfall in your venue. You could have a question and answer or a trivia routine where you directly elicit your audience’s participation.

This is a good idea to further minimize your entertainment costs for your entertainment/dining venue. But remember the saying: “You get what you pay for.” This means that generally the quality of your stand-up comedy entertainment would be low too.

Audiences might be unforgiving and want only to be entertained by the more known and established comedians. They would be less accepting and even hostile of low quality comedians.

What you can do is to promote the stand-up comedy as a group experience. For example, the comedian has family, friends and might even have some followers online. Target them and incite them to support the comedian by coming to your venue where they are performing.

You can also offer your stand-up comedy entertainment as a video making event that would be posted on social media. A lot of people nowadays want to be in social media and would be more inclined to go to shows that would be broadcasted online.

They might even be incited to join the contest just to have the chance of being shown in social media performing before a live audience. Entertainment/Dining venues know how valuable a live audience can be especially in the age of social media.

Stand-up comedy as a form of entertainment for entertainment/dining venues continues to increase. In the USA alone, stand-up comedy’s market size has continued to increase since 2014 and was stopped only by the pandemic, but it’s again rising.

Very small entertainment/dining venues can offer their audiences to comedians if they don’t have a budget for entertainment costs. Many struggling comedians and even professional and established ones still need them to polish their comedy routine.

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