This week, Dropout gave fans what they wanted: a chance to pay more for a comedy streaming service.
Back in April, Dropout CEO Sam Reich announced that the streaming service born from CollegeHumor would be increasing its price by $1, from $5.99 per month to $6.99 per month. While most price hikes for streaming services have been poorly received by customers, this one has had a surprising effect. There were so many Dropout fans who offered to pay more money for the platform for nothing in return simply because they wanted to see Dropout continue to thrive.
Last week, Reich and his friends announced a more expensive “superfan” tier at Dropout, saying, “Your wishes are our orders.” It costs $129.99 per year (discounted to $97.49 for the first year), compared to the annual price of $69.99 for a Dropout subscription.
Reich told Variety that Dropout’s internal plan is to avoid raising the streaming service’s base price by more than $1 a year, but the additional funding from self-proclaimed superfans who simply want to give Dropout more of their own money could help fuel continued growth at no additional cost to the average Dropout customer. And the growth is still small, but strong.
To date, Dropout says it boasts more than 1 million subscribers. From 2024 to 2025, the number of subscribers increased by 31%. And in the latest season of “Game Changers,” the most-watched episode in Dropout history, the season seven premiere “One Year Later,” reached 1 million views in its first two weeks of release in April.
Today, Dropout has a staff of about 40 people, compared to the more than 100 people who worked there before it shut down (and was quickly revived by Reich, a CollegeHumor survivor).
Here, Reich talks to Variety about building a “superfan” base and the future of dropouts (in a “very grave” voice, since “I’ve been filming Game Changers for six of the last eight days”).
When did you start talking about the idea of a “superfan” tier, and how did it relate to Dropout’s major subscription price increases announced in April?
The conversation about this started 8-9 months before the original price change (announcement) video. Because that drumbeat of fans saying, “I want to pay more,” was what we wanted to start focusing on.
I run a business, so I’m not always thinking about rapid growth. But over time, you’ll have to pay more and more people each year. I don’t think that’s necessary. I think that’s what happens when it’s a good business. I think people expect to be treated a little better over time. And we’ve gotten even more ambitious with our Dropout content. Both shows themselves are becoming more ambitious and we want to try more ambitious types of shows. So we’ve almost deliberately kept our subscription costs down. What we’re talking about internally right now is, if possible, let’s not raise more than $1 a year.
We’re kind of the odd duck in the sense that we’re some kind of subscription platform like Netflix. On a flattering note, we’re probably closer to Shudder and Crunchyroll. Niche subscription. On the other hand, we’re also kind of a Patreon because we’re a group of personalities that people love. And while this idea of a higher-end subscription was something we were eager to try if we could, it wasn’t clear that our technology partner, Vimeo, could support it. So we sat down with Vimeo, started building the feature, started imagining what the “superfan” experience would be like, and then released the price increase video. And that was the overwhelming response we got. So we had something in development, and now we decided we needed to see it through to completion.
How did you decide how much money subscribers in the “Super Fan” tier would receive and how much dropout customers in the regular tier would receive?
There is a little sliding scale. At one end of that scale, you have things like exclusive video content. That is definitely the biggest attraction. There will be absolutely nothing on the other side. We probably landed about two-thirds of the way into the middle of nowhere.
What people are getting are discounts on exclusive merchandise and merchandise. They now have early access to live show ticket sales and access to this behind-the-scenes experience. This one we don’t really sell, but it’s actually pretty cool and interesting. And to help make that happen, we’ve added new full-time editorial support in-house. And we’re really excited to see what that will look like.
The difficult thing about this kind of thing is that the most important thing is to tell the fans that they don’t have to do this. In fact, even if they consider themselves “superfans”, they don’t have to be. Never miss any video content. And in terms of video content, we’re still delivering on the core promise we made to Dropout fans, which is that if you spend X amount of dollars, you’ll get video content back in return. So no video FOMO. But at the same time, we don’t want that experience to be worthless and just a flexibility for people with disposable income. That might be the case (lol). But we want to give them something in exchange for their hard-earned money. So, I’ve settled on this for the time being.
And are you getting the mix right? I think you’ll be experimenting a little bit more and finding out exactly what the right mix of values is to attract people to this tier without feeling like you’re alienating your core subscribers. But I think that was the right way to start.
The “Superfan” announcement video hinted that some of this additional revenue stream would go towards Dropout’s plans to expand into scripted and animated content. Where are you currently working on such projects?
Things are progressing, things are progressing. I think we’re just getting a little more ambitious about new programming in general, regardless of the format, whether you call it scripting or animation or whatever you call it. And that applies to the quote, unquote, and unscripted categories as well.
Can we really call “Game Changer” and “Dimension 20” unscripted shows? They’re like semi-scripted shows. I think what we’re best at as Dropout is probably disrupting formats. We’re doing something really non-traditional. So I don’t know if there’s a world where we do screenwriting and animation, but they’re totally making it happen. But with a bit more budget to be flexible with, Dropout Show’s ambitions are growing. That’s really exciting because it allows us to do things that we think are even more innovative. Forever, our budget basically dictated batch shooting without a script in a studio space, but now we can start to color a little outside the lines. The “Fool’s Gold” episode of “Game Changer” was pretty much an example of this. It just means I can do more outside of the studio.
You announced both the “super fan” demographic and the general price increase earlier this year via social media rather than advance notice to press releases and press outlets. How did you make that choice, and how do you balance direct communication with Dropout’s fans and press as the company grows?
Direct connection with fans is important, and it’s partly about being a creature of the internet and respecting that we are creatures of the internet. We have pulpits to broadcast, but really, really, reporting is becoming more and more important now as well. Coverage is first and foremost about legitimacy, but then legitimacy is related to this concept of scale. If you ask yourself, what is the ceiling for Dropout and who are Dropout’s customers, I believe that the audience for comedy is huge, just in the United States, and the ceiling for the company is 5x, 10x, or more. I think it has the potential to grow to 5 million or 10 million subscribers. But those people don’t see us as very legitimate at this point, and they don’t think the offer is legitimate. So how do you convince those people to subscribe? And I think reporting is a big part of that.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
