Gripping a lukewarm Heineken, Jim Gaffigan hunches his six-foot-one frame over a peeling table in the green room of the An Grianán Theatre in Letterkenny, Ireland. Summer nights are never terribly hot in these parts, but this one is warm enough to need some air conditioning, which the theater almost never uses. It’s hardly a glamorous moment. But then again, glamour isn’t really his thing.



“There’s nothing sexy about Jim Gaffigan,” he says, sweat dotting his brow. “I’m not young. I don’t have a full head of hair. I’m out of shape. I don’t talk about having dinner with Kanye.”



Fortunately for him, he is funny. Just ask the more than 300,000 people in 15 countries who’ve paid an average of $56 to see his latest routine. For the 53-year-old father of five, it’s been a grueling schedule: more than 75 cities in the past year, including whistle-stops like Letterkenny, a northern community of 20,000 that was once lauded as the Republic’s “tidiest town.”



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They may not offer much sizzle, but places like this are the lifeblood of Gaffigan’s business. He has raked in $30 million this year, putting him at No. 3 on&nbsp;Forbes’ list of the highest-earning stand-up comedians. Half of that was earned by putting “butts in seats.” 



The rest comes from spreading his punch lines far and wide. And in this business, if those jokes are funny enough—and your reach wide enough—you can fill a lot of seats with a lot of butts. With the right distribution deal, those jokes can deliver exponential returns. But that’s where it gets a bit tricky.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“In the entertainment industry, every house is made of ice and it’s melting,” Gaffigan says. “So you’d better be building a new house.” &nbsp;</blockquote>



Gaffigan’s been building. In 2016, he agreed to partner with Netflix, the industry’s dominant force and home to original specials from all but one of the comedians on&nbsp;Forbes’ ranking. Last year he cut loose from the kingmaker and placed a bigger bet on himself, pairing up with Comedy Dynamics, an independent producer, to release his next special everywhere&nbsp;but&nbsp;Netflix.&nbsp;



Gaffigan will star in the first original stand-up special on Amazon, which is going after the streaming giant with a push into comedy.&nbsp;Quality Time&nbsp;goes live today, and it can be shopped on the open streaming market when its exclusive run with Amazon Prime Video is up in two years. And that market is only expanding.



Gaffigan has learned a bit about home building in the entertainment industry. He cut his teeth on the club circuit in the early 1990s, when HBO was the primary destination for stand-up specials and Comedy Central was a fledgling cable network. 



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In 2000, he landed what was then the holy grail of comedy success—a broadcast sitcom—which was the source of the fortunes the creators of&nbsp;Seinfeld&nbsp;and&nbsp;Roseanne&nbsp;minted once they had enough seasons on the air and could sell the series into syndication.



Gaffigan’s shot proved to be short-lived, but six years later he scored a second chance and headlined a Comedy Central special called&nbsp;Beyond the Pale. This time it paid dividends, landing him his first theater show a month later. The butts were now coming to the seats, and while his rise was live, in person, with microphone in hand, his breakout was digital.



At the time, YouTube was changing the rules of the game, providing comedians a global platform with unprecedented distribution. Then Twitter emerged, giving comedy bookers a real-time assessment of who was attracting audiences. 



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Then came the debut of streaming on Netflix, which latched onto comedy as a cheap and effective way to lure subscribers, while some, notably the now disgraced Louis C.K., used streaming to control their own distribution, making their shows available for fans to purchase directly.



“It was a technological wave that crashed over the stand-up world,” says Wayne Federman, a comedian and professor of the history of stand-up at the University of Southern California. “And we’re still all trying to figure out what’s going on.”



Gaffigan’s first original Netflix special aired in 2017, long after the company had reshaped the industry. It was a promising place to be: Aziz Ansari and Ali Wong were propelled into superstar status through their Netflix specials, while household names like&nbsp;Dave Chappelle&nbsp;and&nbsp;Jerry Seinfeld&nbsp;reportedly cashed in with $60 million (Chappelle) and $100 million (Seinfeld) paydays in exchange for long-term, multi-program deals. Gaffigan’s first special,&nbsp;Cinco, sold for a more modest seven-figure sum.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5d56bc6f95808800097cfe79/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jim Gaffigan stand up comedy specials for Netflix and Amazon Original"/><figcaption>COURTESY</figcaption></figure>



It was more than just a check; it was access to a potential audience of nearly 94 million. Although Netflix’s subscriber base has grown since then, so has its stand-up library. The platform now shops nearly four times the number of original stand-up specials than when&nbsp;Cinco&nbsp;debuted. 



That makes it harder to stand out in the scroll. Plus, the streamer often holds onto specials in perpetuity, including&nbsp;Cinco. The up-front money is nice, but there is no ability to earn on the back end.&nbsp;



Gaffigan used his next special, 2018’s&nbsp;Noble Ape, which was directed and cowritten by his wife, Jeannie Gaffigan, to test the waters. Comedy Dynamics bought the rights and made it available everywhere Netflix wasn’t. It had a theatrical release and could be purchased and rented on multiple services, including&nbsp; iTunes, YouTube and Walmart’s VUDU. 



Later, there were short streaming windows on Comedy Central and Amazon Prime. According to Comedy Dynamics CEO Brian Volk-Weiss, it was even syndicated to planes and cruise ships. The up-front payment to Gaffigan from Comedy Dynamics was lower than at Netflix, but the wide distribution allowed him to earn on the back end, bringing in a total of $10 million, according to&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates.



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And new services are on the way from Apple,&nbsp;WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal and&nbsp;Disney, any one of which could choose to pursue cheap-to-produce and popular stand-up specials.&nbsp;



Because of this widening field, stand-up specials may have more life (and revenue) in them, and that could be good for comedians looking to gamble on their success with deals that offer back-end participation. “We have titles in our library that are making more in year 12 than they made in year one,” says Volk-Weiss, whose company also owns specials by Bob Saget, Iliza Shlesinger and Janeane Garofalo.



Still, leaving Netflix means walking away from a partner that has now established itself as a formidable entertainment company. Netflix has some 180 original hour-long stand-up specials and is singularly focused on exploiting content around the world. Gaffigan, though, is content to keep the bet on himself.



“In the entertainment industry, every house is made of ice and it’s melting. So you’d better be building a new house.&#8221;



In the stuffy backstage room in Letterkenny, Gaffigan reviews some of the new material he tried out on stage. A joke about Ireland’s nonsensical roads killed it. He stumbled with a bit about the English. The classics played well—“My dad never went to a parent-teacher conference; my dad didn’t know I went to school.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



And he’s well aware that Amazon’s core mission is to sell stuff, even though it&nbsp;has won critical acclaim&nbsp;for shows like&nbsp;The&nbsp;Marvelous Mrs. Maisel&nbsp;and&nbsp;Transparent. With plans to deliver three more specials over the next five years, he’s got time to see just how good a partner the retailer might be. Along the way, he may decide it’s time to find a new neighborhood.



“The reason I went to Amazon is to expand my audience,” he says. “I don’t know what they’re gonna do and I don’t fully understand their marketing might. I might be pleasantly surprised. I mean, it’s a huge corporation. They could probably make more selling socks.”



-Ariel Shapiro; Forbes

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Comedian Jim Gaffigan Rakes In $30 Million By Ditching Netflix And Betting On Himself

Once again, Jerry Seinfeld is the King of Comedy.



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The&nbsp;Seinfeld&nbsp;creator earned $57.5 million in 12 months, before taxes and fees, claiming the top spot on our list of the world’s highest-paid comedians. He collected multimillion-dollar dividends from his 2017 Netflix deal and Hulu’s streaming rights to all nine seasons of&nbsp;Seinfeld. Offscreen, Seinfeld made more than $30 million from his first love, stand-up.



Since&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;started tracking the earnings of the highest-paid comedians in 2006, Seinfeld has topped the list every year with the exception of 2016, when he was dethroned by Kevin Hart.



Though Seinfeld is on top, Hart certainly gave him a run for his money. The pint-sized powerhouse ranks second with $57 million, only $500,000 behind Seinfeld. The Kevin Hart Irresponsible Tour, which was the biggest comedy tour of 2018, topped 1 million tickets sold and banked Hart more than $30 million. He also starred in the wildly successful&nbsp;Jumanji&nbsp;remake, which grossed nearly $1 billion worldwide. Hart was recently picked to host the 2019 Oscars, but he stepped down&nbsp;due to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kevin-hart-steps-down-as-oscars-host-1167336" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">backlash against his prior homophobic tweets.</a>



The world’s ten highest-paid comedians made a grand total of $292 million, before taxes and fees, from June 1, 2017, to June 1, 2018. This is a whopping $82.5 million lower than last year’s haul due to fewer Netflix deals. Many of this year’s funnymen—including Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock—saw their streaming earnings decrease from 2017.



Two individuals disappeared from our lineup this year: Amy Schumer and Louis C.K.&nbsp;In 2017, Schumer became the first woman to ever appear on the highest-paid comedians list thanks to touring and a lucrative Netflix special, but she did not meet this year’s $15 million cutoff. As for C.K., he made the comedians list and the ranking of the world’s highest-paid celebrities with $52 million last year. But after he<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/arts/television/louis-ck-statement.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">&nbsp;confirmed sexual misconduct allegations against him in November 2017</a>, Netflix canceled his second special and C.K. stopped performing until this past August when he made an unannounced appearance at the Comedy Cellar.



Gabriel Iglesias, who last made the list in 2015, returns with a career-best haul of $20.5 million, enough for sixth place. The comedian, affectionately known as “Fluffy,” made most of his millions from performing a stunning 136 gigs, but he also inked a three-project deal with Netflix last April for a multi-camera comedy series and two new stand-up specials. He might clinch a higher spot on next year’s list thanks to his Beyond the Fluffy world tour, which starts in February.



The one newcomer is a familiar face. British comedian Ricky Gervais, who claims fifth place with $25 million, made a killing on Humanity, his first stand-up tour in seven years. He received at least $15 million,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates, for his Netflix special of the same name.&nbsp;The Office&nbsp;co-creator has signed on for a second Netflix special that has yet to be filmed.



Without a doubt, Netflix has changed the comedy economy. Armed with an original programming budget as high as&nbsp;<a href="http://fortune.com/2018/07/08/netflix-original-programming-13-billion/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">$13 billion</a>, Netflix is able to outbid most other networks; the streaming service released nearly 100 stand-up specials this year&nbsp;alone.



That said, Netflix hasn’t cornered the comedy market yet. Jim Gaffigan (No. 8, $17.5 million) released his latest special,&nbsp;Noble Ape, direct to digital, bypassing Netflix, which released his previous two specials. Hart, who launched his own fledgling streaming service, Laugh Out Loud, believes&nbsp;Netflix isn’t his most important revenue stream.



“Nothing is ever going to beat touring. It’s an entity that I own and control,” Hart told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2018/02/16/how-kevin-hart-makes-deals-and-why-touring-is-still-his-best-bet/#44943c8b2216">Forbes.</a>&nbsp;“I would never turn my back on stand up; it opened up the doors I walk through now.”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/pictures/5c17ea2ea7ea4370591a9224/the-highest-paid-comedian/">Gallery: The Highest-Paid Comedians Of 201811 imagesView gallery&nbsp;</a>



METHODOLOGY



All earnings estimates are from June 1, 2017, through June 1, 2018. Figures are pretax; fees for agents, managers and lawyers are not deducted. Earnings estimates are based on data from Pollstar Pro as well as interviews with industry insiders.



The World’s&nbsp;Highest-Paid Comedians Of 2018



10. Sebastian Maniscalco



Earnings: $15 million



9. Jeff Dunham



Earnings: $16.5 million



8. Jim Gaffigan



Earnings: $17.5 million



7. Terry Fator



Earnings: $18 million



6. Gabriel Iglesias



Earnings: $20.5 million



5. Ricky Gervais



Earnings: $25 million



4. Chris Rock



Earnings: $30 million



3. Dave Chappelle



Earnings: $35 million



2. Kevin Hart



Earnings: $57 million



1. Jerry Seinfeld



Earnings: $57.5 million



<ul><li>Hayley Cuccinello and Madeline Berg</li></ul>

Tag: Jim Gaffigan

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Comedian Jim Gaffigan Rakes In $30 Million By Ditching Netflix And Betting On Himself

The World’s Highest-Paid Comedians Of 2018