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Danny Frenkel has a dream for Punchup Live, his ticketing platform co-founded with Alex Dajani in 2023: to build the company into “the Amazon of live entertainment.” “I am not passing moral judgment one way or the other on Amazon, to be clear. But [their efficiency is] awesome. It is crazy, objectively speaking,” Frenkel tells me on our Comedy Means Business podcast. “If you were to go back in time… Can you imagine showing a caveman, ‘Put in anything that you want in the world and with one click, it will show up at your door, sometimes in one hour?’ That is bananas. So I aspire to deliver that level of service, just without all of the controversy behind how you’re delivering that service.” Frenkel’s Punchup is a data-driven platform reimagining how comics connect with their audiences, which over the course of just a couple of years, has secured buy-in from comics ranging from Sam Morril and Mark Normand to Shane Gillis and Larry David. Easy to conceptualize and difficult to pull off, the company’s mission has been to consolidate the frustratingly fragmented world of live event ticketing into one seamless ecosystem that benefits artists, venues, and fans alike. “The problem on the live entertainment side is… you have the artists, who we talked about as the best marketer of their goods. Then, you have them selling on a ticketing platform that they don’t own. And then they are selling inventory that they don’t control. And so there’s no communication or overlap of the data to really understand what is or is not working,” when it comes to moving tickets, Frenkel explains. “The irony is, live entertainment is the best, and I don’t think anybody thinks buying tickets to live entertainment is the best, and so we’re trying to bring those two things a little bit more in tune.” Before launching Punchup, Frenkel spent 13 years at Facebook, joining in 2010 when it was still a somewhat scrappy operation. He started in ad operations, and observed during his time there that “Facebook was really, really good at showing, ‘Hey, if you give us a dollar, that turns into $2, or $1.10,’ or whatever it is.'” In contrast, he explains, “Live entertainment is currently a world that’s very hard to fall into the structure of proving out the exact return that you get if you put a dollar in. Because the overall chain of creating a live show and marketing it and selling it is so fragmented that it’s hard to actually calculate it.” Aspiring to provide a seamless experience, when it comes to ticket sales and event promotion, Frenkel’s answer to the problems he’s seen in the broader marketplace has been to invest in “a data science team and a lot of infrastructure for being able to prove out where there is value along this chain and where there isn’t.” That infrastructure offers comics insight into where fans are located — both in the world and and on social media — as well as built-in messaging tools, so comedians can let fans know about new shows and content. Meanwhile, fans can watch comedy clips, discover nearby shows, and buy tickets in a few clicks. The hope is that by making the artist-fan relationship more direct, and the ticket-buying experience more engaging, it’ll be easier to help people get off their phones and into comedy clubs. Frenkel explains that part of the inspiration behind Punchup was the way Louis C.K. operated his business at the height of his fame — going direct to consumer with specials and other content on his website, and building a massive email list on the back of that business in a way that gave him a unique ownership over his audience. The question was, how could you take his business model and make it work for comics lacking access to the kind of massive fan base C.K. had? Frenkel breaks down the work it’s taken to accomplish that on today’s podcast, more comprehensively breaking down all the functionalities of the platform that make it unique in the world of ticketing. He also discusses the “brutal” early process of selling comedians and their reps on his platform, and why it’s emerging comics, rather than established names, that will get the most immediate benefit from Punchup Live. For the full conversation, featuring discussion of game theory, live performance as “a cleanser” for people at a time when most can’t get off their phones, and why the live space is “a durable business that will only grow in demand,” click above.
