In Defense of Comedy Competitions
by Dez Reed on Thursday, October 28, 2010 at 8:28pm
Comedy contests are very unpopular amongst comedians but they are on the rise and comedians keep signing up for them.
Why this paradox?
Because despite their disdain for comedy competitions, comedians desire to be the best and competitions offer bragging rights to the winner. Also, competitors can always chalk up not winning to any number of factors from judge's bias and audience stacking to flat out corruption. This blame game goes on all the time so that comedian's can save face.
Another draw for comedians is the lucrative payout that some of these competitions offer the finalists. Comedians can walk away with thousands of dollars for the more established competitions.
So the reasons for comedians to compete are compelling enough, victory means money and a nice resume addition and losing can be explained away, but why do promoters put on comedy competitions?
Well, very simply, they can make a lot of money. In the case of The San Francisco Comedy Competition, the promoter runs the competition for a month with seven shows a week with good comedians. He sells the shows and doesn't have to pay travel costs, accommodations, meals, or performer's fees.
In many cases, the purse is paid by sponsors, so the promoter literally makes every dollar that comes in from the venues.
So comedians are enticed, promoters are lining their pockets, so why do audiences come?
In many cases they are treated to better shows than they would see at a regular comedy night. The reason for this is simple, multiple comedians add variety and these comedians are usually doing their very best ten minute set. Also, audiences enjoy the drama and being involved somewhat in the final outcome.
So are comedy competitions a good thing?
Let's take the competition I just promoted, Dez Reed's Great Western Comedy Competition.
It ran for 8 weeks with the final being a huge sell out.
During the competition my room, Beilys, had such well established headliners as well as openers and rank amateurs performing. The amateurs brought new people to the room for support and the headliners drew comedy fans.
In the end there were ten competitors. Three of which expected to win, place or show, the others could hope and some could only dream of winning against the seasoned headliners. And after the final votes were counted, one of the headliners, Kelly Taylor was the winner with newcomer and local favourite Junior Koszmun the runner up.
The final result left two comedians very happy, a promoter happy, venue owners happy, sponsors happy, audiences happy and only a few comedians unhappy.
So at the end of the day, for almost everyone involved comedy competitions are a good thing.
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