Why this company is live streaming comedy shows: 'In the U.S. alone, there are 653 comedy clubs'

Jill Bourque, RushTix CEO, joins The Final Round to discuss the company's shift from live events to focusing on curating and live streaming standup comedy.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to The Final Round. Well, the coronavirus pandemic has had a devastating impact on live entertainment. It's forced the industry to really get creative with live streams and virtual events, trying to offset some of that lost revenue from the canceled shows. So for more on this and what they're doing to help the $42 billion standup comedy industry, we want to bring in Jill Bourque. She's the CEO of RushTix.

And, Jill, it's great to have you on the show. In the era of COVID, I know your company pivoted your business. You're doing live virtual standup comedy shows. I just first want to get your thoughts just on the impact that COVID has had on the live entertainment space and to what extent do you think these virtual shows are able to replace and offset some of that lost revenue?

JILL BOURQUE: Yeah, it's been absolutely devastating. If you consider, in the US alone, there's 653 comedy clubs. They're closing left and right. It's just a detriment to the whole industry. Not only that, comedians who made their living on the road touring have no gigs, so it really is a huge problem. In general venues you'll see that in New York City they're trying to do a lot to save venues, and it's a really, really big impact on the industry.

SEANA SMITH: What's the reception been like just in terms of the virtual shows? Because when you think of standup comedy, there's a lot of interaction between the comedian and also the audience. So have you been able to engage your viewers and attract those viewers in a setting that they're not used, that's not the norm?

JILL BOURQUE: Yeah, so we've had to really innovate in this area. One of the things we do is we have a virtual studio audience, so the comedian can have that feedback of live laughter. For a comedian, we really do need that live audience, so that's how we do it. And then we stream to a page where as an audience member you can be with even thousands of other people, and you can chat and talk and have that feeling of community.

So we're doing workarounds to make this virtual experience-- maybe not replicate what it's like in real life, but building some of the community and feedback that you might have at a real life experience.

ANDY SERWER: Wait, Jill, I'm sorry. Can you explain the audience thing again? I didn't quite get that.

JILL BOURQUE: Yeah. Yeah, so the way that works is we actually pick a subset of the larger audience, usually about 15 people. They apply to be in the audience, and they are actually live in the-- just similar to how we are right now, where we can all hear and speak to each other.

And so the comedian can tell her jokes and have that live laughter in real time, and then we take that and we broadcast that just like you guys do. You broadcast it to a page, so that the broader audience can see and hear the comedian and hear the laughter.

ANDY SERWER: And the heckler will do the whole like, "You bum. You're not funny. No one likes you."

JILL BOURQUE: [LAUGHS] We take a lot of care to prevent that. And I would say that these are usually super fans, and we ask that they're polite. And we always have the good ol' mute button if they are really getting out of hand.

ANDY SERWER: And do the comedians make fun of the guy, "You in the front row"?

JILL BOURQUE: [LAUGHS] Well, not usually, but anything could happen. It's live.

- Jill, how many people participate in this? You talked about that subset of the laughter. But how many are you seeing, and what kind of reception are you seeing? Are there certain comedians that are doing better than others?

JILL BOURQUE: Yes. I would say the comedians that are doing the best have a large, engaged, online following. It's very-- it's similar to how their socials work in that they can sell a ticket to anyone around the world. We had a show last month that had 3,700 ticket buyers and a very engaged experience with thousands of people in the chat all enjoying the show together.

So the scale of this can be enormous. It won't be out of the question for our shows to grow to 10,000, 20,000 people, depending on the comedian and their reach.