In 2022 Ticket Source did some analysis and wrote a piece on “The World’s Most Influential Comedians”, which should be something that will generate some debate! It has some pretty pictures and charts – give it a look.
I’d posted about this in the early days of the blog but, as it had only had 1 view, I’ve re-written it. And added some comparison notes on the end, based on my own data on “most popular” (based on subs / followers).
The Ticket Source 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
Let’s look at the rankings first…I’ve added some thoughts, further down, on why I don’t like the inclusion of these chosen measures.
US List
UK List
Methodology?
On this Reporting methodology page (here) I’ve detailed the humps in the road that I have hit, when comparing comedians for the type of posts listed on the Stats page (here). I’ve added Net Worth (to the methodology page) as, in relation to the above, I wouldn’t personally have included it as those numbers are only guesses.
They’ve also given a score for TV Specials and I’m not a massive fan of that measure either, as a TV special that only got shown in the UK shouldn’t rank as highly as a Netflix special. But then where do you rank specials with Amazon Prime, HBO, Hulu or some other network? Does a UK only DVD sale count for more or less than an International one?
I know this article was back in 2022 but they are using Twitter / X and Instagram Followers and, leaving aside that TikTok is now massively important (were they to run this again) when I first started looking at a list of 90 comedians, I tried to only look at platforms that the majority had accounts on. Again, see Reporting methodology page (here).
Even back in 2022 I would have included Facebook (possibly even instead of Instagram, based on what I was seeing, back then, in relation to traffic etc.).
Also, not keen on using “Cheapest Ticket for their next show”. I’ve looked at ticket pricing in the past and, in the US, there are issues with checking some venues as the ticket price can suddenly get bumped up by local taxes and so on. Plus, you have practices such as Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing”, credit card charges, VIP packages 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 then you have people how weren’t touring at the point the analysis was carried out.
And the Search information data was next to useless… Pete Davidson has had a complicated personal life and so is not necessarily getting searched for because of his comedy. And I think Ricky Gervais had just announced a tour, shortly before this report was published so, again, not a metric I would use as there are too many unknowns.
Finally – just to be contrary. I don’t think you can count a WILTY episode’s views for Lee Mack on his own. There’s no way of proving WHO on the show was the reason behind the views. Who is to say that Rob, David and Lee don’t attract a third of the views each?
I’d had a look at this article back in April 2025 and, at that point, Lee’s channel had 21m views and Jimmy’s had 579m. And how about today….
Lies, damn lies and statistics, anyone?
My data (looking at my list of 29)
On the Stats page (here) if you scroll to the Social Accounts section you can see the most recent updates of who has the most followers, views etc.
As of today (May 25th 2026) I’ve not updated all of the reports in a while as a number of the free counters are stuck or completely broken.
But I did have a look at the numbers on February 23rd 2026. Just didn’t publish them.
The overall total Subs / Followers (for the 29) across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter / X, at that point was a whopping:
704,910,472
I saw whopping – this is in relation to numbers for comedians. It never ceases to amaze me the number of people (or bots) that contribute to things like AI slop videos getting billions of views.
My Top 10s can never look close to these Ticket Source results after the passing of 3 years. New names have appeared and, at the time I first started looking at a list of 90+, I’d not considered adding people like Seinfeld, Sandler or DeGeneres as I don’t think they were on tour at the time. Plus, if I were to sit and type a list of “top” stand ups my mind wouldn’t have gone to those 3 (as a Brit).
Also, take into account that the bots purges and ID verification laws are dropping follower counts on several platforms.
A few thoughts on the US / India peeps on my list:
- Kevin Hart tends to be #1 on every metric (apart from YouTube as he hasn’t got a channel). Even without YT he managed 277m subs.
- Joe Rogan comes out as my #2 – which is similar to him being joint #2 above. His 63m followers are way below Hart’s enormous total.
- Matt Rife is at #3 with 46m, Gabriel Iglesias #4 with 35m and Theo Von at #5 with 26m.
- My #6 is then Chris Rock with 20m and not close to the joint #2 that Ticket Source have him at.
Beyond this NONE of the rest of my list feature on the Ticket Source ranking.
And then on to the Brits.
- Ricky is #1 on my list with 25m but his numbers had only gone up by 2,679 since October. This was because of the purges, mentioned above, offsetting new followers.
- Jimmy is #2 with 18m – the difference being that, since October, he’d added 1.48m, in spite of the massive losses on X etc.
- Which means my numbers 1 and 2 are the reverse of Ticket Source, but Jimmy’s numbers are growing faster.
- Jack Whitehall is also my #3 with 15m.
- The Ticket Source #4, Joe Lycett, dropped off my list a while ago as his numbers were not high enough to justify monitoring. Ditto John Bishop, Alan Carr, Jon Richardson and Rob Beckett.
- Ticket Source have Michael McIntyre at #5 and so does my list, with 10m.
- Ticket Source have Russell Howard at #8 whereas I have him at #5 with 8.8m.
- And their #10, Peter Kay, is my #7 with 4.5m
- Finally, my list has Sarah Millican at #6 with 7.3m
Leave a Reply