A Growing Barrel Of Laughs: Judi Marmel Of Levity Live On Today’s Thriving Comedy Market

There’s more than one way to crack an egg, tell a joke or a platform to tell that joke on. Today’s comedy market is thriving and manifold with a wide range of comics and comedy and myriad platforms including: live performance, streaming specials, scripted series, film, podcasts, festivals, social media and international markets. Helping us make sense of this complex web of opportunity and challenges is Judi Marmel, straight out of Colorado Springs, who’s worked in comedy for 37 years. As co-founder of Levity Live and president of Levity Talent, her company oversees some 75 comedians, including Taylor Tomlinson, Leanne Morgan, Bert Kreischer, Fortune Feimster, Dusty Slay, Charlie Berens and Modi, and owns 20 comedy venues.

Pollstar: How was your 2025? What were some of your tentpoles and how do you see the market in general?
Judi Marmel: 2025 was great. The live market leveled out post the boom of 2023 and 2024, but it was still a very successful year in touring. We are continuing to see audiences crave the release and relief of live laughter. Programmers are leaning into comedy and have decided there really is a marketplace for it. Leanne Morgan’s Netflix series with Chuck Lorre premiered in the top 10 and stayed in the top 10. She followed up with a special later in the year that debuted at No. 1, and she remains in the top rankings of all female comics on Netflix. Bert Kreischer’s new scripted Netflix series premieres January 22. Those are my clients, but you see all this business being done with Nate Bargatze and Shane Gillis, and you look at the marketplace and see that comedy is a high card pretty much everywhere

With live, streaming specials, scripted series, social media, podcasts, and international markets, there’s seemingly a glut of comedy content and platforms 24/7 competing with so many other entertainment options. How do you navigate it?
There’s an enormous amount of content out there. From the artist perspective, it comes down to a long-term plan for curating a loyal audience. There are very few artists who can have a special breakthrough and then be set. It’s more often a long road of multiple specials and years of curating the audience who will come back to your full catalog. You need to be everywhere to grow that audience. You can’t just exist on social media, or streaming platforms, or YouTube. There needs to be a combination of all those formats to push an artist to break out through all the noise and become a household name.

Year after year, the market surfaces new talent that breaks on one platform and then transfers to others. In that respect, the abundance of options is a positive thing.
But with so much content and platforms, is it harder to break through?
It is harder to succeed if you don’t have a long-term strategy. A special may not be lightning in a bottle when it first comes out, but if you build the right audience, it can become something people rediscover in a different way. We’ve seen this proven again and again with streaming services. Every time there’s new content released, previously catalogued content gets a boost as well.

In music, often the first question agents ask upcoming talent is how many followers they have on social media or streaming. They don’t want to hear it if it’s say less than 100,000 or something. Is it the same in comedy?
That is certainly the case for buyers and agents. Managers, however, are still in the business of looking for original voices and identifying a place in the market for that voice, even when a lot of people aren’t listening yet. Given the right resources, we create the following and building it is a long-term proposition. You may not see any return on investment for five years, so when managers are making decisions, it’s very much a long-term and investment. For buyers, that’s a gauge, but the irony is that in terms of a pure art form, just because something has a lot of followers or hits doesn’t mean it’s good.

You mentioned several up-and-comers you oversee: Greg Warren, Dusty Slay and Modi. How do you choose comedians to represent?
The one resounding thing we look for across all talent is an artist who is best in class and in a category that is all their own.

We have Nate Bargatze, who topped Pollstar’s touring charts with a massive $77 million gross, on the cover in conversation (see here) with the comedy legend Jerry Seinfeld. What’s your take on how they made it?
In addition to immense talent, Nate and Jerry both have a quality act and an enormous work ethic. Once you get past the social media and all the noise, it comes down to the quality of the art you’re creating and the work ethic that gets it out there. Those are the things that will always help people rise. That’s why you see people get their shot after they’ve put in their 10,000 hours. If you asked any comedy club owner or booker a few years back who the funniest act was coming out of clubs, they absolutely would have said Nate Bargatze.

With Seinfeld and Bargatze, there’s a 25-year age gap. What’s your take on how it was to break in the ’90s versus now?
The access to an audience and fans is so much easier now. You can do a podcast, post on social media, go live and talk directly to followers. There aren’t any gatekeepers to getting your content out into the world. In the era of Seinfeld, the era when I started, you were hoping to get booked on “The Tonight Show” and that Johnny was going to to call you over to the couch. And if he did, your career was made.

Are we at a point now of exhaustion with the woke/anti-woke death spiral? Now, maybe, if you want to be a successful comedian who appeals to as many people as possible, you can make fun of anything you want and talk about anything you want, but maybe not be as dogmatic or polemic?
I don’t agree. I think there’s just as much of that now as there ever was. The difference now is how easy it is to access content that solely aligns with your point of view. If you only want to hear clean, relatable family content, there are multiple people who will serve it up to you. There are so many different voices for so many different generations and so many points of view. I don’t think it’s dying down at all.

Looking at the Top 20 of this year’s Pollstar Comedy chart it ranges from $11 million to $77 million, astronomical numbers. Is the comedy business
more lucrative than ever?
Yes, but at the same time, you look at somebody like Jeff Dunham, an arena act who has been my client with my partner Robert Hartman for 25 years, and he’s been doing those numbers for over two decades.

Interestingly, average ticket prices are still relatively reasonable. For Nate, it’s $80, which is not the highest of the top 20 and could be less than half of what you might pay to see a concert in the same venue.
It’s a great value without a doubt. Acts are putting on great performances and building out entire shows so people feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. Performances are usually two-plus hours with multiple support and good production value.

With so many platforms and ways to approach the market, is it getting harder to manage an artist?
I don’t think it’s harder. I think it’s more inspired. I wake up excited thinking of how many different ways there are to cross-pollinate different acts and break them. It’s also a special moment in time because the general public understands what a stand-up comic is now. You have to remember, as overwhelming as the flood of specials and content may seem, when I started in this, there were maybe two or three specials a year on HBO or Showtime and that was the only long-form content available.

With Netflix comedy specials, series, festivals and now podcasts, are they the primary gatekeeper?
Hulu and Amazon have a platform for comedy, but Netflix invested heavily in it, in a way that has been wildly successful and made it easy for people to find. When you look at the number of views you can get on Netflix versus any other platform, it is substantial. That’s not to say you can’t get critical acclaim and win awards and all of those things on another platform because you absolutely can, but if it’s critical mass and exposure that you’re after, then there isn’t a close second to what Netflix is doing.

International markets seem to be opening for comedy. Are they playing a role in your business?
Somewhat, but not that much yet. Though Netflix does grow the foreign audience. Taylor Tomlinson played all over Europe this summer and the audiences are really smart and aware of American talent. Between YouTube and Netflix, it’s possible to move tickets abroad, even if you’ve never done any grassroots touring or marketing.

How many venues do you oversee?
Our company owns 10 comedy clubs outright, and then we hold an equity position in another 10, so upwards of 20.

And it’s the Improv, which is a storied brand in comedy?
It’s helpful because it’s recognizable. We’ve been in our locations for many, many years and there’s brand recognition that comes with that. We have the benefit of the doubt, where if you look at the marquee and go, “I don’t know who that comic is,” you still think, “Well, if they’re playing the Improv, chances are it’s going to be a good show.” So, we get people that come into the venue, not for the specific artist, but for the club itself.

What are your capacities?
The Hollywood Improv is the smallest, which is 225, but the majority of the rooms seat about 500.

With multiple buildings, do you do tour deals with comedians going through several, if not all of them, in different markets?
Yes and we have a lot of great relationships with talent because when they’re working out their sets to take on tour, they know they will be treated well in a good environment with a smart, quality audience at our clubs. A lot of big acts play for us because they know they’re going to be treated really, really well and can work out material in front of an audience that’s attentive, smart, and in tune before they perform in theaters or arenas. One thing our audience can always count on is that anyone could pop in on any given night.

2026 looks to be a lot already. It’s a big political year. What are you forecasting for your comedians and businesses?
It’s going to continue to be loud and profitable. We wake up every day, and something else you couldn’t even write is happening in the world. People want to talk, share, and digest those moments and if you can do that in a funny way, it’s a huge win.