‘Eating SNL’s Lunch’: How Tony Hinchcliffe’s ‘Kill Tony’ Podcast Became Your Favorite Comedian’s Favorite Show & Sold Out MSG…Twice

The reception Tony Hinchcliffe received when he entered the sold-out Madison Square Garden on Aug. 9 and 10 was nothing short of electric. It was the kind of ovation Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson used to get on his many appearances at the “World’s Most Famous Arena” during WWE’s Attitude Era. Early Rock, mind you, the character that everybody loved despite his being a “heel” (“adversary” in pro wrestling lingo). Hinchcliffe is finding himself in a similar situation: a roaster by nature, he may never become a fully-fledged “babyface” (“hero”); but, more than 25,000 people on their feet over two nights didn’t care one whit.

Hinchcliffe wasn’t at the Garden to perform solo material, but as the host and booker of the hottest comedy show on earth right now, “Kill Tony,” one of the few podcasts to make the steep jump from sponsored digital content to hard ticket act.

The shows, the first podcast ever broadcast from Madison Square Garden, were sold out (with seat kills) and the biggest “Kill Tony” live shows to date, selling 25,193 tickets across two nights, averaging 12,596 per night, and grossing a total $2,389,143, according to the box office report submitted to Pollstar.

“Kill Tony” is a talent show in the broadest sense, featuring Hinchcliffe, co-host Brian Redban, and a changing panel of special guests, who invite amateur comedians on stage, listen to a minute of their set and talk about it. Anybody can sign up before the show, names are collected in a bucket and pulled at random. “Anything can happen,” as Hinchcliffe always reminds the audience before reaching into the bucket.

It’s true: some sign-ups bomb spectacularly, either because they’re nervous to the point of shaking or because their jokes aren’t funny. But, for the most part, the majority hold up well. For some, it’s their very first time on stage doing comedy in front of an audience, others have been doing stand-up for ages to no avail. The show is at its best when you see an unknown comedian for the first time and immediately realize they were born for this. Take Trish Smart, from episode #655 (March 19, 2024) who travels the world as a self-described nomadic stand-up comic who last March killed on the podcast, which now has 2.6 million YouTube views.

The funniest end up as regulars of the show, like Kam Patterson, whose early appearances on “Kill Tony” went viral. He is currently touring comedy clubs up and down the country and performed both nights at Madison Square Garden to an ovation worthy of a superstar in the making.

If you do well as a regular, you may become a hall of famer, like David Lucas, introduced by Hinchcliffe as the “Dark Roast God” when he came on stage in New York. He lived up to his name, shredding anybody sitting on the panel next to Hinchcliffe – Joe Rogan and Shane Gillis on night one; Dave Attell, Adam Ray as Joe Biden, and Shane Gillis as Donald Trump on night two.

“Watching my regulars get to have the moment of their lives up there, to watch people that got pulled out of a bucket have an opportunity, going from sitting in the audience not knowing if they’re performing, to performing in the greatest arena of all time, made me feel so happy,” said Hinchliffe when we spoke two days after the MSG shows. He was still reeling from what he described as “an absolute rush.”

“I feel like I haven’t even begun to come down yet,” he continued, “luckily, a lot of my friends that were part of the show have been calling and telling me the same thing. It makes me feel more human getting a call from Andrew Dice Clay, saying ‘That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve been having trouble sleeping because of the adrenaline.’ He was the first [comedian] to ever sell out Madison Square Garden. And here we are, however many decades later, and he’s losing sleep over it. It makes me feel like I’m okay. And I’ve been getting those calls from absolutely everybody, the Black Keys, Aaron Rodgers, (Joe) Rogan, (Joey) Diaz, everybody that was a part of it.”

The Black Keys opened the second night of “Kill Tony” at MSG, and Rodgers came out right at the end to throw custom-designed “Kill Tony” footballs into the audience, and “put a ribbon on this thing,” as Hinchcliffe often says. Moments before, Rogan had appeared after being called a coward by Gillis’ Trump for endorsing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rogan announced the acclaimed veteran comedian Joey Diaz, who came to close things out in style.

“The king has arrived,” said Hinchliffe.

“I love you motherf—ers, I grew up in this bitch,” said Diaz. The crowd was on its feet.

Looking back at the two nights at Madison Square Garden, Randy Fibiger, senior vice president, bookings, MSG Entertainment, said “The atmosphere was high-energy and electric, and the audiences loved every minute of it. Tony’s live band was incredible, as were guest musicians Jelly Roll, The Black Keys and Marcus King. And a long list of special guest comedians and celebrities made for two highly entertaining nights at MSG.”

By the time the credits were rolling on night two, Brian Holtzman, Pauly Shore, Big Jay Oakerson, Jeff Ross, Ari Shaffir, Jim Norton, Harland Williams, Joe DeRosa, and more had all performed on at least one of the episodes.

“It’s just so surreal to have these guys be part of it,” Hinchcliffe said.  “It’s absolutely a milestone in my life.” A milestone that took “months and months of hard work, and me sitting at a desk all by myself trying to picture how this could go, what the flow would be like, just envisioning the two nights of explosion that everybody got to see. It was a lot of manifesting, a lot of picturing. Executing it, quite frankly, was the easiest, least stressful, most fun part. I got to sit back and just watch my vision come true.”

Three more comedians, who regularly appear on the “Kill Tony” podcast, made their Madison Square Garden debuts: Jared Nathan, from Toronto, who has a severe stutter; Martin Phillips from Washington, D.C., who has muscular dystrophy; and Ahren Belisle, who competed in the 2023 “America’s Got Talent” final, and who has cerebral palsy. He can’t talk, and therefore delivers all of his jokes typing on a phone connected to a Bluetooth speaker placed in front of the mic. Sometimes, their sets are about their disabilities, sometimes not at all. The only thing that matters for those few minutes on stage is that you’re funny. That’s always been the case at open mics. Open mics just never had this big an audience before.

“One of the things that makes our show special,” said Hinchcliffe, “is that you’re seeing different people, different shapes and sizes and races and ages and everything. Usually, with long-form podcasts, you’re watching two people have a conversation about different topics for a long time. But on this show, I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s fireworks: there’s different colors, and explosions, different moments, and even some duds that makes you realize that the whole thing is live and that anything can happen, which makes you appreciate the great moments that much more.” 

A core part of “Kill Tony” are the interviews after every one-minute set, where Hinchliffe teases out interesting things about the comedians “I want our audience to be able to hear these different perspectives from everybody,” he explained, “where they’re from, how they grew up, what they do, what makes them different. It’s all critical to the flow of the show. We’re all different, but we all laugh at a lot of the same stuff and it brings us together. The show is so raw, so organic, so live, there’s just never been anything like that before and I can’t believe that I’m the one that did it: a little white-trash Italian kid from an all-Black neighborhood [in Youngstown, Ohio]. It’s just the American Dream and I could not be more ecstatic about it all.”

Growing up, Hinchcliffe used to get into a lot of fights with bigger kids. Making fun of them was his defense; getting their entourage to laugh about them was his triumph. Having overcome all that, by the time he made his debut at LA’s Comedy Store in 2007, he already felt like he was winning, he told Theo Von on his “This Past Weekend” podcast. He also recalled prepping for months for his debut, and completely blanking out on stage. Hinchliffe decided to just be honest and turned his own forgetfulness into a solid three-minute improvised set. He bombed in the weeks after, with jokes he’d rehearsed, so to this day Hinchcliffe is most comfortable off script.

Case in point: “The Roast of Tom Brady” on May 5 of this year, part of the Netflix Is A Joke Comedy Festival, and heard around the world. Hinchcliffe “got to do a ‘Kill Tommy’ sketch with Dana White, and then went and ripped it up there. A lot of people were like, ‘What the hell was that? Who did I just see? And what was that weird ‘Kill Tommy’ thing?’”

He didn’t just roast Tom Brady, but everybody on set, including one of his mentors, the “Roastmaster General” himself, Jeff Ross, Kevin Hart, Nikki Glaser, and others. It was a comedy masterclass that showcased Hinchcliffe’s decade-long experience writing roasts for other people and his preternatural ability to think on his feet.

“I was adapting up until the very last second,” Hinchcliffe recalled, “everything was changing, I was making edits, adding things, cutting things out, and repositioning things. I prepared a lot of those jokes for the roast, but I didn’t know how and when I was going to do it. I decided very early on, when I got there, that I was going to go from left to right, and be the only one that moves around. I was trying to figure out what the main cameras were seeing so they could see me and also the person I was roasting, so I was directing that while performing. It was a lot of work and a lot of adrenaline; a real blur, but an absolute blast, and one of the highlights of my life.”

Though he’s now bursting into the mainstream, Hinchcliffe is in no way a newbie. “Fifteen years of writing on roasts, and performing stand-up led me to that position, to be able to just execute up there,” he says. “It wasn’t just some magical moment; it was almost two decades of continuous practice. The kid that used to roast everybody in school, fully grown, 40 years old, up there, doing what I was built to do. Tom Brady deserves all the credit in the world for even letting me have that position and giving a young buck a chance like that. Even though I’ve been doing it almost two decades, it felt like a mainstream-overnight-success type of situation.”

Brian Dorfman, owner and co-CEO at Outback Presents, Hinchcliffe’s promoter since the beginning, knows it wasn’t. “He had a vision, and a dream, and never gave up. Think about this, he’s had a year, maybe 18 months of ‘Wow, look at this!’ But he’s done this for 11 years, so there’s nine years of just doing a show and learning. So many people will give up, but he had the vision and the fortitude to stick with it. This is all Tony Hinchliffe. Now, there’s other people that have helped, but this is his dream and vision, and let’s not forget about all the work that went into it when nobody was following this.”

The first episode of “Kill Tony” was shot in 2013 in The Belly Room of LA’s Comedy Store – in front of 15 people, with four sign-ups, as Hinchcliffe recalled on the first night at Madison Square Garden – in front of almost 13,000 people, with hundreds of sign-ups. Milestones along the way include the 10-year-anniversary episode at ACL Live at The Moody Theater in Austin, TX, June 23, 2023; followed by the first arena show at H-E-B Center at Cedar Park, Texas, on New Year’s Eve; Joe Rogan bringing on Post Malone as a surprise guest on “Kill Tony” episode #625 (Aug. 28, 2023) was another big bump for the show; as was episode #672 (July 16, 2024), where Shane Gillis and Adam Ray faced off as Donald Trump and Joe Biden. It is to date the most-watched episode in “Kill Tony” history with more than 17 million views at the time of writing, as well as over 1 billion minutes of viewing time.

“The Roast of Tom Brady” wasn’t Hinchliffe’s only appearance in May at the 2024 Netflix Is A Joke Comedy Festival. He also hosted two episodes of the “Kill Tony” podcast after a smaller first show sold out. “The Netflix Comedy Festival made us a low offer, not necessarily financially, but in terms of venue capacity,” says Hinchcliffe’s manager Alex Murray at Brillstein Entertainment Partners. “We told the booker, ‘You really are underestimating the power of this audience.’  We just kept passing and passing and finally they made us an offer for the YouTube Theater, which is 6,000 seats. We sold out in 10 minutes on the pre-sale. The booker called and was like, ‘What is this?’ And we were like, ‘I told you.’ The second show we added was at The [Kia] Forum, sold out within days as well. We’re being careful with how many of these live shows we do, because Tony goes out of pocket for production oftentimes. We really want to make them special and unique. Madison Square Garden, same thing. The first show sold out in a day, and then we added the second show, which ended up selling out.”

Not a single dollar in advertising, mind you, was spent to achieve this feat. The only promotions were Hinchcliffe’s announcements on the podcast and socials. His reach is just that strong. The “Kill Tony” YouTube channel has 1.6 million subscribers. The 1-million mark was only reached in April; the growth is exponential. The channel gets 15-30 million-plus views every month. In July alone, it was 13 million in one week and 35 million across the whole month. July also saw 330,000 new subscriptions. “I represent other big acts, and we’ve got to promote those shows,” said Murray, “but when it comes to spending money [on promotion], Tony’s like, ‘No, trust me, I got this.’ We listened and he’s right. He’s been right 100% of the time.”

“Kill Tony” is doing remarkable numbers whether compared to other shows on streaming services or TV networks, according to Nick Nuciforo, partner, and head of comedy touring, UTA, who said, “This audience is coming out in droves on YouTube, and is really fueling this incredible growth of the last year. And he streams the big events, pay-per-view style, which are an international phenomenon. He’s had people from over 60 countries viewing every time that he’s done one of these events. We have strong interest from a number of international territories right now, we know through the back-end analytics of his social media and YouTube pages, as well as our streaming performance, where in the world this thing is shining bright, and it’s an international phenomenon right now, far bigger than just the U.S.”

“In my mind,” said Hinchcliffe, “we are, at times like that, just absolutely eating ‘Saturday Night Live’’s lunch. Shane Gillis doing his Donald Trump, Adam Ray as Joe Biden, Dr. Phil and many more – they could have had that. These are the new stars, the backbone of modern-day comedy, and having worked with these guys forever, and finally putting them in positions to be seen in their finest light, doing their funniest stuff, watching them break character because they’re cracking each other up, is just priceless. It’s not written out, it’s not rehearsed. Everything is improvised, and that’s the secret sauce of ‘Kill Tony.’”

Hinchcliffe decided to move from LA to Austin during the pandemic when Texas was the only state allowing performances in front of a live crowd. The first episode of “Kill Tony” in Austin took place Jan. 11, 2021, at Antone’s Nightclub. By that point, it had been going 10 months without a live audience. Aside from practical reasons, “it also made me a happier person,” said Hinchcliffe, “The people are nicer, the art is better, the food is better. My spirit is filled, which makes me a better host, who makes better decisions for the show. Normally, you go to New York or LA to make it and take things to the next level. You don’t go anywhere else to thrive, but that’s exactly what we did, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be than at home here in Austin, Texas. It just fills my heart with so much joy, and it’s my favorite place in the world.”

Joe Rogan’s move from LA to Austin in September 2020 was something of a catalyst for some big names in the game to follow suit. Tom Segura, Hinchcliffe and Shane Gillis, to name a few. Rogan opening his own club, the Comedy Mothership, at the old Ritz theater in 2022 was the spark it took to light the Austin comedy scene on fire. He and Hinchliffe talked about the appeal of Austin on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast: “It’s a better place for comedy,” Rogan said, “You don’t have the traffic, it’s not a grind. The club situation is amazing: there’s Cap City, there’s The Creek and The Cave, there’s the Vulcan, there’s the Sunset Strip, the Mothership, the Black Rabbit, the Velveeta Room, Shakespeare’s. You realize you don’t have to be stuck in this crazy city of insane traffic and crime.”

Hinchcliffe added, “Having Shane [Gillis] here is a death blow to the other cities. Even the few people that we really want, that haven’t moved here, are coming here all the time, like it’s a Vegas residency.” Another indicator of the Austin appeal are the bucket pulls on each “Kill Tony” episode. Every other candidate either just moved to Austin or is currently sleeping in their car somewhere around the city until they find an apartment. As different as these rising comedians are, they share one and the same dream: to make it, which used to be the reason people went to LA or NYC.

Outback’s Dorfman said it would be too simple to reduce everything to Austin. “It’s easy to say ‘Austin,’ but the truth of the matter is, over the years, LA or New York were the gatekeepers, and now there’s no gatekeepers. You’re watching the best at a craft just put their stuff out there and let the people decide. Before, in order to get the word out there, someone had to tell you, who was good and who wasn’t. Well, the people have decided. We did 26,000 people in Madison Square Garden. It’s the largest live podcast….In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, before the podcast really started, there were radio DJs, and they probably wanted to be comics. Now, the shows are hosted by the greatest comedians this business has seen. It’s not a mistake that the Bert Kreischers, Shane Gillises, the Joe Rogans and Dave Chappelles of this world are the greatest of all times. This is the greatest moment comedy’s ever seen, and it’s because the comedians are running this.”

Brillstein’s Murray agrees: “Comedy Central made a lot of comedy shows that people watched, it launched comedy stars, and created new careers, it was a whole thing. But viewing habits changed during COVID, people started migrating to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, watching on their phones, and Tony’s show was literally the only comedy show that was meaningful, original, fun, and cool that existed. The audience really felt like they discovered the show organically, it wasn’t ever promoted or marketed to them.”

“Its popularity is purely democratic,” Nuciforo says, “People are voting for it by watching it and the public has spoken. Talent discovery shows are a wildly popular format. The entire world loves to root for the underdog and the possibility of people becoming famous. This is an extension of that. It’s very unique. There’s a reason it’s getting so big. I was at Madison Square Garden, talking to fans, as I often do, and it was usually one super fan that brought a spouse or a significant other or a couple friends, turning them onto the show. ‘Kill Tony’ is creating stars of the people who are discovered through the show and that’s helping to create growth within the comedy community. It’s good for comedy when comedy succeeds and new people come to discover it.”

The next “Kill Tony” livestream is scheduled for Resorts World Arena Las Vegas, Sept. 25, a New Year’s Eve show is in the making, as well as an international outing to London. It stands to reason, given the show’s hard ticket and podcast success, that “Kill Tony” is being approached by multiple studios – streaming, TV, film, cable or otherwise. Hinchcliffe holds all the cards.

“I’m just happy to have complete creative control,” he said, “and not have to deal with network notes from some executive or director. Everybody’s listening to me, and that’s why I think it works. It’s not watered down by a bunch of other people’s opinions, or any old-school stuff that’s going to drag it down and make it too safe, or make it resemble anything else. It’s brutally original, even though it’s technically a talent show slash open mic. It’s so raw, and because truly anything can happen and everything is improvised, it maintains its loose, dangerous, live feel. And it’s too late for anybody to catch up. Nobody can even do a rip off of that show, because they would have to play it safe. You look at your ‘American Idols’ and your ‘America’s Got Talents, ‘and it’s made for grandmas and grandpas, it’s meant to be on the TV at nursing homes. No cool 18-year-olds want to watch that. Meanwhile, you got 18-year-olds watching ‘Kill Tony’ with their parents, watching with their grandparents, and everybody’s entertained. Everybody has something to love about it. And onward and upward, we’re going. We’re gonna see where this shift goes, but there’s no end goal. This is still just the beginning.”