That's why the bit worked (but, let's leave the frog gently steamed instead of boiled). But I'm saying, I don't think he was making that up. I think he was able to sell the bit because everyone, himself included, believes it to be fundamentally true. Which very simple math corroborates. The first Louis CK show I saw was at the Vic, a tiny theater, which sold out 1000 seats at $35+/ticket on a two-show night.
The second show I saw sold out the Chicago Theater on another two-show night.
* Booking the venue
* Paying the venue staff
* Producing marketing materials
* Doing the actual marketing
* Transport
* Hotel
* Transport for the support acts
* Hotel for the support acts
* Fee for the support acts
* Fee for the support acts' agents
* Insurance
* Agency fees
It adds up. Obviously I don't know anything about his finances, maybe he is actually stinking rich, all I'm saying is tours like that aren't necessarily as profitable as they might first appear.
Then of course the money he does take might have to support him and his family through months of zero income while he writes new stuff.
His overhead could be 70% and he'd still be taking home huge amounts of money for every tour.
He's selling out shows and has been for at least ~4 years now. If the tours weren't lucrative, he'd raise the face price of tickets.
Sorry, I just don't buy the idea that Louis CK is anything but "pretty wealthy" at this point in his career. Which is great, because he's one of my favorite performers anywhere.
Posting this anonymously because I don't want to seem like I'm plugging myself and my management would probably get angry.
I'm a standup as well, not quite as large as CK but a number of tv spots under my belt etc.
But it's absolutely right. There's barely anything.
You're average split goes a bit something like this:
Depends where you are. On average a theatre takes around 30%. A bit less in Australia (eg Melbourne Comedy Festival) which takes about 20%-25%. A bit more in European theatres (eg Edinburgh Fringe Festival) around 40%-45%.
Booking / Ticketing fee is around $3-$8 per ticket. For the average show ticket price that's about 10%.
Management takes a flat 15%-25%.
Depending on the scale of marketing, on average it's around 15% of the show budget. The industry wisdom is at least 10% of every ticket should be spent on getting people.
If there is a huge promoter behind you, they sometimes take a stake in the show, usually around 30% - 60% and includes the marketing budget. It's not that you're trying to convince people. It's more like, if they don't know you're there, they won't come.
Then all the travel / accomodation costs.
That's if you're doing theatre shows. The other side of the coin is college campuses, corporate entertainment, which pay a flat rate. The largest gig I did was opened in a 30k seat stadium and I made $4,000.... so not a lot.
Plus you're always touring, unable to maintain relationships, getting heckled (few careers involve being openly sworn at by masses, it's not healthy for self-esteem), feeling like a self-promoting whore and constantly wanting to die because you're whole career is shouting into darkness.
That doesn't even include the opportunity cost. It takes 10 years to get to the point where you can reliably book a 1000 seat theatre. That's assuming anybody comes in the first place... Until then you're making nothing.
It's not uncommon to see someone sell out a show and walk away with very little.
Whilst what CK did is amazing. I don't think it can be done by most standups. I think it would have turned out differently if he didn't have a tv show airing already, basically he's at the top of his career.
The scary part is if standup isn't as as lucrative as it's made out to be. Theatre in general is even worse...
I got started in standup about 10 years ago and went from doing 2-minutes at an open mic to MC at the DC Improv for Robert Schimmel in something like 4 years. That's 4 years of getting on stage every chance I got and trying to write material that was funny and current. It gets old quick. When it came time to make a decision about comedy (which I loved then and still do), it became more about opportunity cost (as you put it) and lifestyle factors. My next move was to go out on the road and to be honest, that life just didn't appeal to me. Add in the stress of dealing with club managers, never having enough money, and circulating among other comics with various levels of personal disfunction and addiction issues and I opted for a "boring" life in tech.
Show business is a tough life and it's the rare individual who can make a go at it and find success enough to have a "normal" life. My observation has been that the stress of the performer career/lifestyle leads to substance abuse faster than almost any other career choice outside of high finance.
The next time you see a comedian performing in a comedy club, consider this: unless he's the headline act, he probably made something like $50-$75-$150 for his performances for the entire night depending on how long he was on stage. If that sounds good for 20 or 30 minutes of "work", figure out how much time was spent travelling and writing material before you do your final calculation. Nobody gets rich off of middle money.
The second show I saw sold out the Chicago Theater on another two-show night.