One benefit from Will Smith’s slap: Chris Rock's ticket sales are surging

Chris Rock is bringing his G.I. Jane material on the road, and people want to see it

One benefit from Will Smith’s slap: Chris Rock's ticket sales are surging
Chris Rock Photo: Robyn Beck (AFP via Getty Images)

As we enter the third day of The Slappening, it’s time to find the people benefitting from the incident. First, Will Smith, the perpetrator of the smack, won an Oscar mere moments after walking on stage and smacking Chris Rock in the face. Now, despite delivering one of the hackiest jokes about a woman’s medical condition in recent history, Rock is cleaning up due to this millionaires’ quarrel.

Whether they desire more witticisms direct from 1996 or hope that someone else will slap Rock mid-performance, fans are lining up for the comedian’s recent stand-up tour, the aptly titled “Ego Death World Tour 2022.”

According to Variety, the ticket sales for “Ego Death” surged following the slap, reporting that one secondary marketplace has “sold more tickets to the comedian’s tour overnight than they did in the past month combined.” Prices jumped by nearly $300, too, from a $46 minimum up to $341. His first show is in Boston tonight at Wilbur Theater.

Will “Willennium” Smith has since publicly apologized for the slap after dancing the night away to his own songs with his little gold man. Chris Rock’s brother, on the other hand, isn’t accepting the apology. Instead, he told fans on Twitter that P. Diddy did not, in fact, squash the beef “like family,” as was reported. Nevertheless, he did say that “all of them are fine […] Still rich.”

And that’s all that matters, right? Still rich. After all, as Kareem Abdul-Jabar put it: “Hollywood awards shows are traditionally a venue where much worse things have been said about celebrities as a means of downplaying the fact that it’s basically a gathering of multimillionaires giving each other awards to boost business so they can make even more money.”

So there you have it, Rock’s appearance at the Oscars had the intended effect. Great work, everybody!

 
Join the discussion...