800 Pound Gorilla goes direct-to-fan with a comedy streamer

A new streaming service is betting that comedy doesn’t need to be a category; it can be the whole platform. On May 5, comedy distribution company 800 Pound Gorilla Media will launch Gorilla Comedy+. The boutique streaming service will feature a 250-plus-title library of stand-up specials, including new sets from Patton Oswalt, Pete Holmes, Emmy Blotnick, Jourdain Fisher, and Nish Kumar, alongside the company’s existing catalog.

Gorilla Comedy+ is partnering with Cineverse, using its AI-powered Matchpoint platform to build apps across devices. The service will handle distribution and onboarding, while Cineverse’s tech stack will also enable interactive features layered across content. Subscriptions at launch will cost $9.99 a month or $99.99 for the year.

Up until now, 800 Pound Gorilla Media has operated more as a middleman in the comedy industry. Founded in 2016, it initially specialized in distributing audio-only comedy albums. In recent years, the company has produced and distributed projects on YouTube, like Matt Rife’s Only Fans, as well as specials for major streamers including Netflix and Peacock. It has also partnered with production companies like Kevin Hart’s Laugh Out Loud Network and Comedy Central.

But will cutting out the middleman and owning the platform, production, and marketing cannibalize the company’s existing business model?

“Gorilla Comedy+ is about giving fans the ultimate stand-up experience while providing comedians with a platform that values their work,” says Ryan Bitzer, cofounder of 800 Pound Gorilla Media. “We designed it to complement existing partnerships and to make it easier for fans to discover and enjoy the comedians they love.”

The company plans to launch new specials exclusively on the platform, then roll them out to YouTube, AVOD, FAST channels, and licensing partners. Bitzer believes windowing content first on Gorilla Comedy+ will make everything downstream more valuable. “Each window compounds the last. Distribution remains core to the business, but [Gorilla Comedy+] gives us something we’ve never had: a direct relationship with the end consumer and subscriber-level data on who’s watching, how much, and what they want next.”

Niche as Core

In recent years, niche and boutique streamers have seen growing success. Anime streaming service Crunchyroll has racked up 17 million subscribers. Tubi, the free, ad-supported streamer, has more than 100 million monthly users, driven in part by its commitment to niche content. Both, however, have key advantages: they are owned by larger companies (Sony and Fox, respectively), and boast significantly larger libraries. Crunchyroll, the closer analogue to what Gorilla Comedy+ is trying to build, has more than 2,000 titles and simulcasts hundreds of anime series annually.

What Gorilla Comedy+ lacks in scale, at least early on, it hopes to make up for with platform features. “We’re also building features most streaming platforms don’t have for comedy: tour date integrations, interactive overlays, and comedian spotlight sections that surface a deep catalog to new fans,” says Ian Adkins, cofounder and head of innovation at 800 Pound Gorilla Media. “The platform is organized around the comedian, not just the content.”

Closer comparisons may be Nebula and Dropout. Nebula is a creator-centric, independent streamer that, as of 2024, has close to 700,000 paying subscribers. It uses a complementary distribution strategy, largely centered on YouTube, where creators can post content after an exclusivity window on Nebula ends.

Dropout, meanwhile, has driven popularity and profitability with a much smaller library. Its back catalog consists entirely of CollegeHumor content, and it currently runs a slate of 16 ongoing series. The company has managed churn through a staggered publishing schedule, a strong push into vertical video promotion, and a tight pool of talent that appears across multiple, often all, of its titles.

“We’re targeting thousands of subscribers by year-end, building from an initial base of superfans who already buy directly from us,” says Adkins. “We’re modeling for around 5% monthly churn, which is in line with benchmarks for niche SVOD platforms. More important than raw subscriber count in year one is engagement: We want to prove that a dedicated comedy audience will show up consistently, watch deeply into the catalog, and stay. That’s the signal that tells us the model works.”

800 Pound Gorilla Media is betting there’s space for a streaming service devoted entirely to stand-up, and that a smaller, loyal audience can carry it. In the end, success won’t hinge on scale so much as whether viewers keep coming back for another set.