On Dec. 4, Amy Poehler hosted a stay recording of her less-than-a-year-old podcast, “Good Hold,” on the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood. The group wasn’t simply packed, it was totally engaged and cheered for just about something (even Poehler’s admission that she’d forgotten the beginning time of the present).
That is essential as a result of, as one in all her friends, comic Ron Funches, identified, “Don’t they know podcasts are free? They’re severely overpaying.”
Actually, I do know he mentioned it as a result of, though I stay mere miles from the Fonda, I watched a video recording of the occasion on YouTube.
Podcast listening is, traditionally, a solo expertise: Put in some earbuds or crank up the automobile stereo, sit again and let blossom a parasocial relationship with strangers who inform tales in such a means that they change into our smartest, funniest or most gifted buddies. As a result of we are able to take them anyplace, they preserve us linked to life exterior of our small orbits. Whereas selling her new film, “Die My Love,” actor Jennifer Lawrence mentioned she dad and mom her younger little one whereas an AirPod blasts homicide podcasts into one in all her ears.
Nevertheless, going to a theater to see these podcast performers stay can really feel like the precise reverse: Strangers with the identical area of interest curiosity crowding into one place in not simply rapt, however perhaps even a bit rabid, consideration.
“These are individuals who don’t exit to exhibits,” says Joe Schwartz, a comedy touring and stay occasions agent at United Expertise Company. “This could be the primary present they’ve ever purchased tickets to as a result of podcasters are reaching completely different folks than your common music fan or your common comedy fan.”
Hosts additionally don’t need to be beloved comedians like Poehler. Schwartz says that podcast followers might look like passive listeners, however get all of them in a room collectively and it would as effectively be the Eras tour.
“It’s simply as loud whether or not there’s hearth cannons or not,” he says. “When these podcasters stroll on stage … it’s deafening. I’ve to place my fingers over my ears. And I’ve completed that many instances.”
As they change into greater, productions additionally should discover methods to make them extra profitable.
“We’re additionally more and more in a media panorama that’s paying increasingly more consideration to those creators, and it’s bleeding into conventional media,” says Sarah Mathews, a digital expertise agent at UTA. “They’re solely going to get greater and we’ll in all probability solely get nearer and nearer to a extra direct comparability of an Eras tour. Perhaps the subsequent podcaster who’s doing a stadium tour can compete with Taylor Swift or Dangerous Bunny.”
Podcasting has been round for many years (some may even bear in mind when it was merely known as radio). And though some stars are turning off their mics, like comic Marc Maron did when he ended his seminal “WTF” podcast in October, they’re nonetheless business moneymakers.
The 2026 Golden Globes will characteristic their first-ever podcast class, with “Good Hold” being one of many six nominees. This yr, the British Podcast Awards had been dubbed “the Oscars of the medium” by the nation’s the Observer newspaper. In August, comedians Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang hosted the first-ever televised Las Culturistas Tradition Awards, normally honored on their profitable popular culture gabfest “Las Culturistas.”
The Interactive Promoting Bureau reported this yr that podcasting “is on monitor to method the $2.6 billion mark by 2026” with comedy and sports activities persevering with to be essentially the most engaging to listeners. Apple’s listing of the hottest podcasts of the yr, which was launched in November, contains the less-serious or comedy-skewing (“The Joe Rogan Expertise”; “Name Her Daddy”) but additionally motivational (“The Mel Robbins Podcast”) and information and options (“This American Life”; “The Day by day”).
Not translating these successes to podcast excursions is leaving cash on the desk. Some exhibits, like Jessica McKenna and Zach Reino’s “Off Ebook: The Improvised Musical” — the place their complete shtick is to make a musical from scratch on the spot — had been born for these moments. Equally, Georgia Hardstark is an skilled TV presenter and actor, and Karen Kilgariff a skilled comic. Their just lately accomplished “My Favourite Homicide” stay tour additionally made it fascinating with shock friends and their real enjoyment of seeing audiences in hyper-specific cosplay.
“Many high podcast excursions now rival stay music and comedy excursions in venue dimension, routing and ticket gross sales. We’re additionally seeing extremely sturdy merch numbers at these exhibits because of the energy of their fan bases,” says UTA agent Jackie Knobbe, who represents “My Favourite Homicide’s” stay enterprise.
And, oh the fan bases.
Hardstark and Kilgariff bear in mind the second they realized that stay exhibits for “My Favourite Homicide” had been by no means going to die.
In 2016, they had been requested to carry out on the Chicago Podcast Competition. They thought they’d be opening for another person, however the demand was excessive sufficient that they rapidly offered out the practically 1,000-seat Athenaeum Heart as headliners. On the finish of the present, the performers advised their viewers they’d be within the foyer, anticipating to satisfy a couple of followers. Three hours of images, hugs and signings later …
“That night time, we realized we now have to determine what we’re going to be doing and the type of present we’re going to offer versus what I’d all the time seen, which is folks getting these Costco folding tables and 4 guys sitting and dealing with the viewers,” Hardstark says.
However jazz fingers and true crime aren’t the one titillations that can get followers to stay exhibits. Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell’s standard British podcast “The Relaxation Is Politics” offered headlined London’s 20,000-seat O2 Area.
The target is to keep away from the “stay expertise of ‘this might have been an e mail,’” says Tom Whiter, the overall supervisor for British podcast manufacturing and distribution firm Goalhanger, which produces the “Relaxation Is” collection (see additionally: “The Relaxation Is Historical past,” which Apple Podcasts just lately named the most effective podcast of 2025, and espionage-focused “The Relaxation Is Categorized”).
Whiter says that, for his firm’s exhibits, “we received’t do an episode of the podcast on stage, and we don’t document it and put it out to the podcast viewers.” They’ll additionally tailor present matters to the cities they’re in or make the dialogue cheekier than what you’ll be able to say on air.
Most significantly, his firm doesn’t need this to really feel like college; these hosts needs to be much less dry teachers and extra die-hard nerds about their topics.
“This has bought to be one thing that they wish to do and wish to do on a regular basis and wish to discuss to their wits’ finish,” he says of his hosts. But additionally, “we’ll discover the individuals who we discover actually participating and who we expect folks wish to spend numerous time with.”
They, like Poehler, want people who find themselves good hangs.
