BEIJING, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- Consumers in China have no shortage of free comedy on their phones. Increasingly, though, they are paying to see it live.
Box office revenue from stand-up comedy specials surged 244.7 percent in 2025 from a year earlier, according to the China Association of Performing Arts. Attendance soared by 190.5 percent, while the number of performances increased by 42 percent.
Notably, the comedy audience is still widening. New customers accounted for 68.4 percent of stand-up comedy audiences in the first half of 2026, data from entertainment industry tracker Lighthouse Professional Edition showed.
Such figures reveal growing demand for live comedy, despite the abundance of comedy content online.
At Xingzhi Comedy Theater in Beijing, a mixed stand-up bill typically costs less than 100 yuan (about 14.8 U.S. dollars), a regular stand-up comedy fan surnamed Liu noted.
"You can interact with the performers," Liu said. "It feels much more engaging than watching a comedy show on a screen, and you can really relax."
On a summer weekend night, comedian Hu Xiaotong and three other performers spent more than 90 minutes riffing on work, relationships and everyday frustrations before a laughing, applauding crowd.
For some customers, spending does not stop with the ticket.
A Beijing resident surnamed Xu has watched comedian Liu Yang's stand-up special seven or eight times and has traveled to other cities for his shows.
"Sometimes you suddenly feel that your own troubles have been put into words," Xu said. "It is almost like a massage for the mind. You laugh, but sometimes you also feel like crying."
Clearly for some fans, buying a comedy ticket can also mean spending on travel, dining and shopping.
Bobo Laugh Theater, located inside Shenyang Joy City in northeast China, staged nearly 400 shows in the first half of this year. Audiences can eat, shop or spend more time in the mall before and after a performance.
Founder Li Bo said the theater also hopes to draw visitors from outside Shenyang and give them a taste of the city's local character.
Comedy is moving into other commercial and tourism settings as well.
This summer, an annual comedy festival in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province, paired theater shows with an outdoor entertainment area and activities spanning social interaction, city life and tourism. In the eastern coastal city of Qingdao in Shandong Province, meanwhile, festival performances were held in traditional courtyard compounds and retro-style cafes. In Shanghai, also in east China, some comedy audiences seek out stand-up performed in the local dialect and centered on local culture.
Comedy companies are, additionally, looking beyond the conventional stage.
Mahua FunAge, a Chinese comedy producer known for its films and stage plays, is experimenting with formats that combine live comedy with dining and drinks, said Liu Yuanyuan, general manager of the company's performance operations center.
Its immersive production based on the popular Chinese drama "Empresses in the Palace," for example, departs from a more traditional theater setting and incorporates acrobatics and magic.
The supply of comedy has broadened alongside demand. Stand-up now competes for audiences with sketch comedy, improvisation and comedy plays, while performers who built followings through television programs are taking their shows on tour.
Hu said Beijing had just over 100 stand-up comedians when he started performing five years ago. The number has since grown to more than 1,000, with over a dozen comedy clubs now operating in the Chinese capital.
He credits online comedy shows with helping to build the market. Some people who first encountered stand-up as viewers later tried five-minute sets at open-mic nights, with some eventually moving onto larger stages.
The expanding market is also placing greater demands on ticketing services, venue management and consumer rights protection.
With more shows competing for audiences, however, the bigger test is whether the content can keep people coming back.
Zhang Sining, a researcher with the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, located in northeast China, said audiences are looking for comedy that turns ordinary experiences and frustrations into something they can recognize in their own lives.
As expectations rise, she said, originality and artistic quality will matter more to the industry's long-term development. ■
