What does Taylor Swift have in common with a group of improv comedians pretending to be wizards? They can both sell out Madison Square Garden (…and also, their fans kind of hate Ticketmaster now).
Dropout’s real-life Dungeons & Dragons gaming extravaganza, Dimension 20, is poised to sell out a 19,000-seat venue just hours after ticket sales opened to the general public. To the uninitiated, it may seem absurd to go to a huge sports arena and watch people play D&D. As a Redditor commented, “This leaves me perplexed. When I was playing D&D in the early 80s, I never believed there was a future where people would watch D&D live at Madison Square Garden. It’s incomprehensible to me.
It is indeed bizarre, although amusing. But in this monumental moment for the real game like, the triumph is overshadowed by the biggest frustration that binds fans of sports, music and now D&D: Ticketmaster. As Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan said amid the Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster scandal, the company’s failures “ended up converting more Gen Zers into anti-monopolists overnight than anything it could have done.”
In the case of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, fans were unhappy because demand was so high that Ticketmaster’s system couldn’t handle the traffic. For Dimension 20, the culprit is Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing. As more people try to buy tickets, ticket prices increase. About an hour after Madison Square Garden tickets went on sale, the few dozen remaining Upper Bowl tickets were going for $800. Three hours later, those tickets are around $330, which is still very inflated.
“We went to presale, tickets were over $500 for the worst, we assumed they were scalpers and the current sale would have tickets at regular price…$2000 for the bottom bowl!? I know it’s not the abandonment that sets the price, but wow, that’s A LOT of money,” one Redditor job. And as one commenter aptly pointed out, thanks to dynamic pricing, Ticketmaster itself is effectively the scalper. Of course, Dimension 20 fans are frustrated, especially since the show’s content is overtly anti-capitalist.
Despite the pricing debacle, demand for the series is a good sign for both drama shows and the creator economy as a whole.
Shows like Dimension 20 and Critical Role, which recently played to sold-out audiences at the 12,500-seat Wembley Arena, aren’t every creator’s reality. But a decade ago, these kinds of pop star-sized productions for online creators would have been unthinkable. In 2013, it was a big deal – worthy of a New York Times article – that YouTubers John and Hank Green performed to a packed house at Carnegie Hall, which seats about 3,000 people. Today, the boundaries between Internet users and “real” celebrities are less present than ever.
Even the story of Dropout, the production company behind Dimension 20, illustrates these changing tides. When the comedy site CollegeHumor closed its doors, one of the company’s executives, Sam Reich, acquired the company, which has since become Dropout. Now, Dropout produces a variety of comedy shows (in addition to Dimension 20) that capture the lightning in a bottle that has eluded more traditional shows like Saturday Night Live. Like SNL at its best, Dropout’s cast is as compelling as the actual shows – if you think Lou Wilson is funny in Dimension 20, then you probably want to watch his episodes of Game Changer, and so on. The Dropout beast feeds. Meanwhile, four of the Dimension 20 cast members launched the creator-owned Real Play podcast. Worlds beyond number last year, which now has more than 30,000 paying subscribers on Patreon, who pledge $5 a month to the project.
This important step for Dimension 20 is even more evidence that the relationship between Silicon Valley and the creator economy hype cycle has absolutely nothing to do with the actual careers of creators. Of course, venture financing for designer businesses fell down from its peak, but who cares? Designers can sell out Madison Square Garden.
