What does Taylor Swift have in common with a group of improv comedians pretending to be magicians? They can both sell out Madison Square Garden (… and also, their fans hate Ticketmaster now).
Dropout’s Dungeons & Dragons live show, Dimension 20, is very close to selling out a 19,000-seat venue just hours after tickets went on sale to the general public. To the uninitiated, it might seem absurd to go to a huge sports arena and watch people play D&D. As a Redditor commented, “This boggles my mind. When I was playing D&D in the early eighties, I never would have thought there was a future where people would watch live D&D at Madison Square Garden. It’s incomprehensible to me.”
It is indeed strange, albeit amusing. But in this monumental moment for her real game genre, the triumph is overshadowed by the biggest disappointment that connects sports, music, and now D&D fans: Ticketmaster. As Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lina Khan said amid the Taylor Swift-Ticketmaster scandal, the company’s failures “ended up turning more Gen Zers into anti-monopolists overnight than anything else. [she] he could do”.
In the case of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, fans were upset 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, the price of tickets increases. About an hour after Madison Square Garden tickets went on sale, the few dozen upper bowl tickets left were $800. Three hours later, those tickets are going for about $330, which is still very inflated.
“We went to the presale, tickets were $500+ for the worst, we assumed they were scalpers and the actual sale today would have regular price tickets… $2000 for the lower bowl!? I know it’s not the drop that determines the price, but wow that’s a lot of cash,” a Redditor was posted. And as one commenter astutely pointed out, thanks to dynamic pricing, Ticketmaster itself is actually the scalper. Naturally, fans of Dimension 20 are disappointed, especially since the show’s content is overtly anti-capitalist.
Despite the drop in prices, the demand for the show is a great sign for both the actual shows and the creator economy in general.
Shows like Dimension 20 and Critical Role, who recently played a sold out show at Wembley’s 12,500-seat arena, aren’t every creator’s reality. But 10 years ago, this kind of pop star-sized output for online creators would have been unthinkable. In 2013 it was a Big issue — worthy of a New York Times write-up — that YouTubers John and Hank Green played and sold out Carnegie Hall, which seats about 3,000 people. Now, the divisions between internet people and “real” celebrities are less present than ever.
Even the story behind Dropout, the production company behind Dimension 20, exemplifies these changing tides. When the comedy website CollegeHumor folded, one of the company’s executives, Sam Reich, bought the company, which has since evolved into Dropout. Now, Dropout produces a variety of comedy acts (in addition to Dimension 20) that capture the lightning in a bottle that has escaped more traditional shows like Saturday night live. Like SNL at its best, the cast members of Dropout are as fascinating as the actual shows — if you think Lou Wilson is funny on Dimension 20, then you’ll probably want to watch episodes of Game Changer and so on. Dropout’s beast feeds. Meanwhile, four of Dimension 20’s cast members started the creator-owned real-world gaming podcast Worlds Beyond Number last year, which now has over 30,000 paid Patreon subscribers who pledge $5 a month to the project .
This milestone for Dimension 20 is yet more proof that the relationship between Silicon Valley and the hype cycle of the creator economy is completely unrelated to the actual careers of creators. Sure, venture funding for creative companies has fallen since its peak, but who cares? Creators can sell out Madison Square Garden.
