ComedySportz Chicago

The ComedySportz Franchise Model

The ComedySportz format was developed in Milwaukee in 1984 by Dick Chudnow. The Chicago franchise opened in 1987 as part of a national expansion of the network that eventually placed independently owned ComedySportz companies in dozens of cities across the United States and the United Kingdom. The Chicago company joined the franchise at an early stage of the network's development, becoming one of the first ComedySportz operations outside Milwaukee.

Chicago Operations

Dave Gaudet joined the ComedySportz Chicago roster in 1988 and served as Artistic Director from 1989 to 1992, building the company's programming and performer base during its formative years. He later returned as Artistic Director in 2006 and 2007, and subsequently became a co-owner, President, and Chairman of the Board of the Chicago company. ComedySportz Chicago's programming has occupied several Chicago locations over its history, including a period at 3209 N. Halsted Street before the building became home to The Playground Theater.

Format and Positioning

The ComedySportz format presents two teams of comedic improvisers in a competition structure, with audience members voting on scenes and a referee enforcing content rules. The format explicitly prohibits adult or offensive material, distinguishing it from the transgressive aesthetic of The Annoyance and the mature-audience programming of iO and The Second City. This positioning has made ComedySportz Chicago a consistent venue for corporate events, school groups, and family audiences throughout its history.

ComedySportz Chicago operates within the game-focused, short-form competitive tradition that Keith Johnstone's Theatresports format pioneered in the late 1970s and that the ComedySportz brand formalised into a franchise format in the mid-1980s. The competitive structure, in which audience votes determine the winner of each round, creates an accessible performance frame for audiences unfamiliar with improv: the competitive stakes provide clear narrative tension, and the referee's interventions generate comedy through their enforcement of rules.

The family-friendly content mandate is both a constraint and a distinctive market position. Where iO and The Second City serve audiences expecting sophisticated, adult-register comedy, ComedySportz Chicago explicitly addresses audiences for whom family accessibility is the primary criterion. The franchise curriculum teaches improvisers to generate high-energy, accessible comedy within the competitive format rather than to develop the ensemble depth and thematic coherence that the Harold tradition values.