When comedian Kevin Hart steps onto the stage at Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday, it’ll be one of the largest stand-up comedy performances in American history—possibly the biggest, depending how you score it. Organizers expect at least 50,000 people at the football stadium where the Philadelphia Eagles play, with a live gate that could hit $4 million.  Doing his stand-up act in a football stadium is a showoff flourish for Mr. Hart, a 36-year-old North Philly native who is about to finish up his “What Now?” road tour. He’s not playing huge stadiums all over the National Football League. In other cities he’s been performing in basketball arenas holding a mere 12,000 to 20,000.  Mr. Hart isn’t the only comedian putting up rock-star numbers in oversize venues these days. Madison Square Garden, which holds up to 19,000, has hosted more stand-up comedy shows in its arena this year than in any year in its history. Louis C.K. sold out four Garden shows in January and Mr. Hart appeared three times this summer. In November, Bill Burr will perform at the Garden as part of the New York Comedy Festival, and Jim Gaffigan is scheduled to perform in December. Comic Aziz Ansari played the Garden late last year.  “It’s crazy how stand-up has changed,” says Mr. Gaffigan, who has been performing across the country this year, mostly at theaters holding 1,200 to 4,000 people. “I never contemplated performing at the arena at Madison Square Garden. That’s where you see a Bruce Springsteen perform or the Knicks play—not a pale, doughy guy talk about being lazy, and food.”  Andrew Dice Clay, who pioneered arena comedy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, puts the sound and fury of giant-sized arena audiences another way: “I used to feel like looking behind me and going, ‘Where’s the lead guitarist?’’’  Mike Berkowitz, a partner at talent agency APA who represents Mr. Hart as well as Mr. C.K., Mr. Ansari and Mr. Burr, says that when he started in the business 15 years ago, “there were five comedians that were playing 2,000-seat venues. Right now there are more than that who are able to fill 15,000-seat venues. And probably more than 100 who can fill 2,000 seats.” He says he is in talks to have Amy Schumer be one of the first acts at the Nassau Coliseum when it reopens in 2016. “She’s from Long Island, and Billy Joel, a Long Island legend, did the last show there,” he says.  What’s behind the boom? For starters, the comedians playing the enormo-dome arenas are accomplished performers who have been building their material, performance styles and fan bases in some cases for decades. In the case of Mr. Hart, his act, focused on relationships and family, has broad appeal.  Decades ago, a single appearance on “The Tonight Show” or “Ed Sullivan” could establish a comedian’s career. Now the most successful comics pursue a diverse mix of media. Comics are starring in online Web series, podcasts, and sitcoms on diverse cable channels. Netflix has been aggressive in acquiring comedy specials. Music services like Spotify and Pandora have assembled huge comedy-listening libraries.  “I credit satellite radio, YouTube, Comedy Central” for boosting comedy audiences, says Mr. Gaffigan, whose sitcom recently premiered on the TV Land cable channel.  “Social media has helped a lot,” adds Caroline Hirsch, owner of the Caroline’s on Broadway nightclub who produces the New York Comedy Festival. The quick-quip format of Twitter seems tailor-made for comedians whose job is to crack one-liners, she suggests. Social media’s chatty link to fans becomes a great way to recruit a live audience.  In his early years, Mr. Hart handed out reply-cards at his comedy club shows to collect email addresses, so he could alert fans about shows. Now he has 21 million Twitter followers, and about the same number subscribed to his photos and videos on Instagram. In one of the internal emails leaked last year from Sony Pictures, an executive wrote that the company paid Mr. Hart “an extra 2M” to tweet about its films.  Louis C.K. has used his email database and website to sell albums, videos and show tickets directly to his fans, avoiding record labels and Ticketmaster. In January he emailed ticket buyers when a snowstorm canceled one of his Madison Square Garden shows. (He wrote: “I am really sorry about this and I am surprised to learn as I write this that there is only one L in the word canceled.”) This month he let fans know he was selling his latest self-produced album, “Live at Madison Square Garden,” for which buyers on his website may pay any price they want “from 1 dollar to 85.”  Promoters determine from past ticket sales when a performer is ready to step up to a bigger venue.  “Kevin’s tour before this, he was doing 2,500-seat theaters,” Mr. Berkowitz says. “We’d set up to do one or two in a city—and then have to add shows. Once that happened, we knew we had a shot to fill arenas. On this tour, we set aside dates to add shows in arenas.”  Still, there are some pretty big auditoriums that performers can test before making the leap to an arena. The Microsoft Theater (formerly Nokia Theatre) in Los Angeles, site of occasional stand-up shows, seats more than 7,000.  Whether Mr. Hart’s Philadelphia show could break a record (the stadium can hold around 70,000) isn’t crystal clear. The Guinness Book of World Records lists a 2008 show by German comic Mario Barth—70,000 fans at Berlin’s Olympiastadion—as the biggest live comedy audience ever.  The material that comics perform at arena shows often doesn’t stray much from what they do in smaller venues. The cozier stages are where they work out their routines, after all. But the experience of comedy can be different in an arena. Mr. Clay says he has advised comics entering arenas to “just pace your laughs, because it’s a wave effect. It takes a minute for the room to absorb the joke.”  Arena comedy can be spectacular or low-key. Louis C.K.’s shows at the Garden, and Jerry Seinfeld’s biggest show—for 20,000 at London’s O2 Arena in 2011—looked like the gigs they do anywhere else. For his 2006 “Vicious Circle” tour, Dane Cook performed from a round stage in the center of the arena, like it was a circus or boxing match. He ran down an aisle and up to the stage while high-fiving fans.  Mr. Hart has brought giant screens and pyrotechnics (literally devices that blast fire) to his tour and has promised more for the football stadium (he declined to be interviewed for this story, and his agent Mr. Berkowitz didn’t want to leak details).  Mr. Barth’s Berlin soccer stadium show included a full-size replica of the Brandenburg Gate. Mr. Barth says through a translator, “you need the ability to give every single spectator the feeling that you are talking face-to-face to him, no matter whether you play a club or a stadium.”  Going so large isn’t for every comic, even those who can get 18,000 people to sit and listen to them complain. “Madison Square Garden was never a goal or something I contemplated,” says Mr. Gaffigan. “Having lived in New York City for 25 years, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity. I’ll do the Garden once, and I’ll make it a hell of a show, but that is my ceiling. That’s it. I believe stand-up should remain an intimate experience.”
Thanks to stand-up’s popularity of stand-up, comedians from Jim Gaffigan to Kevin Hart and Louis CK are drawing rock-star audiences to huge venues