After Selling 600K Tickets In 2 Days For His World Tour, Comedian Matt Rife Sets First Netflix Standup Special
08.09.2023 - 17:05
/ deadline.com
Comedian Matt Rife has had an astronomical rise.
Last summer, the 27-year-old from North Lewisburg, Ohio struggled to sell a hundred tickets a show. But earlier this year, when he announced his ProbleMATTic World Tour, he sold around 600,000 tickets over the span of just 48 hours.
Now, after two self-released specials, he has scored his own Netflix special.
Rife will film the hour-long special – Matt Rife: Natural Selection – on September 22 and 23 at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington DC.
The streamer also celebrated Rife’s upcoming birthday on Sunday, by giving him his own billboard outside The Laugh Factory in LA.
Produced by Irony Point and exec produced by Rife and his longtime manager Christina Shams, the special will premiere on the streamer later this year.
It comes after Rife, who has spent 12 years on the road, broke out during Covid, when he and comedian friend Paul Elia launched Lowkey Outside. A semimonthly, socially distanced comedy show, spun off from one they’d done at The Comedy Store pre-pandemic, Lowkey saw the pair performing for small crowds from the bed of a pick-up truck, in the back of apartment complexes and event spaces across Los Angeles.
He has also gone viral on TikTok, where he has over 16.7M followers and more than 5B views.
Rife previously self-produced and distributed through YouTube his first one-hour comedy special, Only Fans, which garnered 9.8 million views. He then self-released his second special, Matthew Steven Rife, on YouTube which was taped in Austin, Texas before putting out a crowd work-focused special in June.
Rife told Deadline that the “idea and route of traditional success in comedy doesn’t really exist anymore”.
“It’s so much fewer and far further between now. You’d