Wildly popular, comedian, and actor, Matt Rife is bringing his ProbleMATTic World Tour to Stephens Auditorium in Ames on Thursday, Nov 2. Contributed Photo/Courtesy Of Stephens Auditorium
Like most small-to-mid-sized markets, Springfield often attracts two types of touring entertainers: up-and-comers and fading stars.
TikTok-famous comedian Matt Rife is one of the anomalies.
When Rife performs four sold-out shows at Blue Room Comedy Club on July 12-13, the 27-year-old will be somewhere around the apex of his superstardom amid a 115-date world tour.
Many of those shows — in much larger venues of much larger metropolitan areas — were instant sell-outs, too. Thousands were reportedly on a waiting list last week for a recently announced Washington D.C. stop slated for September.
Rife, who has more than 18 million combined followers on his TikTok and Instagram accounts, announced his "ProbleMATTic" tour last week in a video with actor Ashton Kutcher. With just 24 hours to prepare for the pre-sale, fans from around the world flooded Ticketmaster's sites for tickets, creating pre-sale pandemonium many compared to the announcement of music star Taylor Swift's "The Eras" tour. ”I have Matt Rife tickets," a Springfield man added to his online dating profile, jokingly referencing the demand.
Fortunately for Springfield's Rife fanatics, he was booked at Blue Room in January, months before the world tour announcement. "It sold out within 24 hours of us announcing he was coming," said Blue Room owner Chris Richele.
Richele, who has booked dozens of prominent comedians since his club's 2016 inception, said he has never ever experienced anything quite like the Rife effect. He compared Rife's swift and unconventional rise to that of Dane, a comedian who hit his stride in the 2000s.
"It's a cultural phenomenon. This kid is the face and voice of comedy right now," said Richele, who booked Rife in 2021 when the young comic was beginning to pick up steam. "He has cracked the code and figured out how to get popular."
Tickets for Rife shows in major venues can cost hundreds of dollars due to his high demand. Tickets to see Rife at Blue Room, an intimate 200-plus seat club in downtown Springfield, sold for around $40. When news spread that Rife's shows at Blue Room had sold out, Richele said some fans were willing to pay him up to $500 if he would do anything to come up with a ticket. He politely declined. The only unclaimed Rife tickets Blue Room has are being raffled off. The club has hosted a weekly raffle and has sold hundreds of raffle tickets.
Unfortunately, Richele said, multiple people have claimed to have been ripped off by ticket sellers claiming to have Rife tickets.
One woman said she spent $300 on a scam. Richele looked into the matter and gave the woman an available ticket, but promptly cautioned the club's social media followers to not buy any tickets that aren't being sold directly from Blue Room.
Blue Room doesn't use outside ticket vendors, Richele said, and doesn't allow tickets to be resold.
"If someone is trying to sell you a ticket, don't buy it," Richele said.
