In 2022 Ticket Source did some analysis and wrote a piece on “The World’s Most Influential Comedians”, which should generate some debate!

The scores were reached by looking at:

• Estimated net worth
• Number of TV specials
• Twitter and Instagram followers
• Cheapest ticket for their next show
• Number of Google searches
• Average number of YouTube views their content gets

Before we get into the weeds of the results – I could argue with a couple of those metrics (the bottom of that article goes into more details of how they came up with their figures).

Estimated Net Worth

This is a silly one as, with lots of people in the public eye, this is just a “finger up your bum” guess. If they don’t use a Company to manage their affairs (and Jimmy, as one example, doesn’t utilise one) then how does anyone know how much money they have?

We don’t know, with anyone, how much they get paid for TV shows / Network specials / corporate ties ins etc. We don’t know what their outgoings are. No one knows (until it all blows up) whether anyone has issues with gambling / drugs etc. etc.

I always roll my eyes at these “net worth” websites. Waste of time looking at them.

TV Specials

Is this just TV specials or Netflix? The problem we have, these past few years, is that everything is becoming so fragmented. Netflix is probably still the gold standard as a home for comedy specials – but what if people have a deal with Amazon Prime, HBO or some other network?

The other perspective is, with Louis CK for example, if networks decide that someone is persona non grata and don’t offer them a special – then they have to find another way to make a living.

Louis (after his cancellation) chose to go the route of using his own website as an outlet. On there he’s not only selling the usual “tickets and t shirts” but also streamed versions of older shows. Not only is he back selling out Madison Square Garden – he’s got a lot of control over what he can say in his routine and how he’s portrayed.

Twitter and Instagram Followers

2022 seems sooooooo long ago, from this perspective. Now it’s all about TikTok and putting out crowdwork clips. But focussing on these 2 leaves out Facebook and, love it or loathe it, it pays a decent amount for content (from what I can see) and is a good place for comedians to have a following.

The problem with Twitter / X is that it’s always been susceptible to political movement. Prior to Elon buying it those on the right of centre felt that they couldn’t speak freely on there – and since his purchase (and especially since Trump was re-elected) the platform is seeing an exodus of those on the left to BlueSky Social. People closing their X accounts can mean a comics follower count can drop, without them actually doing anything wrong.

Were Ticket Source to run this piece again – how many social platforms would they look at? When you look at comedians (both sides of the pond) they tend to all have accounts on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. YouTube is more hit and miss as not everyone gives clips away for free.

See the bottom of this post for some figures, from today, on platform use.

We also get into the issue now of a lot more fragmentation of which platforms are used: BlueSky, Discord, LinkedIn, Mastodon, Only Fans, Patreon, Punchup.Live, Snapchat, Spotify (and Apple and other podcast type outlets), Threads, Tumblr, Vimeo…and their own websites.

Cheapest Ticket for their next show

Not sure how useful this metric is. I have looked at ticket prices fairly recently and, in the US, you have issues with checking some venues as the ticket price suddenly gets bumped up local taxes and so on. Plus, you have practices such as Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing”, credit card charges and so on. And surely it depends on the size of the venue?

In the UK we roughly have 3 tiers of venues – (1) the pubs and clubs that are under 500 (some as small as 50 heads) (2) the theatres circuit – which is kind of 1,000 to 3,000 and (3) the arenas are more like 10-20k. All of those would have different ticket prices – but it doesn’t MEAN anything because someone who can fill arenas might also use a 50-seat comedy club, when they do WIP gigs.

And what about people who were not on tour at the time of this article?

Number of Google searches

Google may be the dominant search engine – but it’s not the only one and many people that are “anti-Google” will use anything else they can find. But also, the comedians in this article are international and many countries have search engines in their own language. Russians, for example, may be more likely to use Yandex. Really hard to get a good handle on popularity in this way.

In recent years we have drifted away from search engine reliance. If, for example, someone saw a tour promo on Facebook / X etc. – they would just click on the comics link to their website, to look for tickets. They wouldn’t move across to a search engine to trigger a new search.

Comedy is more like a business now and comics know how to promote themselves online – without having to put up tour flyers or use local radio / TV ads. Sure, they may also use those outlets – but they are not as important as they once were.

Average number of YouTube views

See the “TV specials” argument and also consider the US comedians who have moved to platforms such as PunchUp.live and Only Fans.

The other thing that muddies the YouTube waters is not all YouTube channels are the same. In the example of Jimmy’s channel – there is a lot of content in there from both his TV shows and stand-up specials. But the introduction of his Heckle Amnesty series (in 2024) means that some of the most viewed clips are heckle videos that went viral.

When you look at the channels of comics that have podcasts – things get even harder to assess. Example Tom Segura – podcast episodes and stand up – so how do you compare his viewing figures against someone who may ONLY have stand up in their channel?

The Article – US comedians

The American artists are, thankfully, separated out from the Brits. The US is such a HUGE market that you cannot possibly compare US / UK comedians in any sensible way. Their numbers are just mind blowing.

From my own research in this area – I have no idea, 3 years on, how accurate those numbers are – but I would say the names are probably about right. Or were at that time.

I don’t know enough of the fine detail, in relation to American comedians, to comment on this data.

The Article – UK comedians

First of all – bit of a cock up with the banner image. Jack and Ricky’s picture should be reversed and Jack’s @ handle appears under both pictures.

I’ll throw out some thoughts of my own on the figures…give you something to agree / disagree on.

• Net worth – how did they come up with such specific amounts? Where did they get the info from? I can’t imagine how Alan Carr could possibly have a higher net worth than Jimmy…
• TV comedy specials – at this point (2022) Jimmy had 4 Netflix specials so what are the other 8 that they are counting? John Bishop has been credited with 15, which includes his DVDs – were everyone else’s DVDs included? Jimmy is very dominant, in turns of TV hit shows hosted, so would that not count too?
• Ricky is more successful in terms of streamed shows (Afterlife) and his viral awards show hosting jobs in the US
• Further down Lee Mack is credited with “highest average YouTube views” which seems off. As of 14-4-2025 Lee’s whole channel has views of 21,124,598. Jimmy’s channel views are 579,101,235 – so 21m against 579m?? I know it was 3 years ago but I’d be surprised if Lee’s views were the highest in the UK at any time, purely because he doesn’t use his channel that much.
• When we get down to “every country’s favourite comedian” – it just so happened that, at that time, Ricky had announced a new tour. If Ticket Source were looking at ticket searches in each country – that is going to skew the results. Whereas someone like Jimmy is constantly on tour and just announcing new legs / single gigs, virtually on a weekly basis.

Anyway – we could go on and on debating this from every perspective. There are lies, damn lies and statistics.

At the end of the day comedy is subjective and everyone has their favourites.

Socials – 14 April 2025

To support my argument about different comics using different social platforms – I put together a quick table for 5 of the UK big names. Note:

• TikTok is hard to see exact figures for
• I’ve ignored “fan accounts” (that include clips), did my best to find the official accounts
• Ricky is very big on X – but he spends a LOT of time on there, posting about various shows / tours. But also his cats and other personal stuff
• Peter Kay doesn’t seem to be making the best use of social platforms – but I would imagine that, if he’s selling tickets, he doesn’t mind