A Future for Professional Magicians

I don’t have the answers. But let’s pretend I do.

A few weeks before sitting down to write this, I published an edition of One Ahead titled A One-Man Magic Marketplace. It’s our most-read edition this year and drew a mix of criticism and praise.

Many empathised with the edition’s premise: that wealth inequality will continue to rapidly worsen. Amazingly, I heard this from both ends of the wealth spectrum.

I spent time conversing with those who disagreed with my predictions, and reviewed the video reaction Craig Petty posted to his YouTube channel.

Setting aside some issues they had which I view as minor — like some wording choices; describing a family business as a family business without also stating that family businesses can be large and successful, or my use of the term “office” instead of “workshop” — it felt as though the source behind many of our prediction disagreements actually came from a misalignment on the premise.

To get to the predictions I laid out, you have to jump full in on the premise that the middle class is going to collapse in the next five to ten years as wealth continues to be hoarded by billionaires.

If we don’t tax the billionaires, they’ll continue buying our assets — that’s the premise.

If you accept that premise, it’s hard not to come to the same predictions.

I perhaps didn’t do a very good job before of backing up this idea with evidence. That was intentional at the time. Instead, I tried to make it clear at the top of the article that in order to read further, we must go along with the idea that wealth inequality will worsen.

The edition was framed as an “If X happens, then…”

Even now, I still don’t quite view it as the role of a magic article to explain why growing wealth inequality is negative, or why it is happening, or that it even is happening.

Airlines are tearing out economy seats to add more luxury cabins for $10,000+ tickets and even American football stadiums are replacing general admission seating with new premium boxes. I believe the magic marketplace will need to do the same and that there will be more magic shops closing, and more consolidation throughout the industry.

The share of spending my U.S. consumers in the top 10% income bracket is hitting 50%. The middle class are struggling with a very real cost of living crisis as all of their assets are getting bought up by the super wealthy.

So what might the same premise mean for the working professional magician?

That’s a good question, but it would be a bit foolish not to also fold the rapidly improving AI tools into the mix when predicting their future.

Spend thirty seconds browsing OpenAI’s new Sora platform and you’ll realise that social media (and maybe even TV) performers are in for a rough ride.

The quality of these artificial social media videos is genuinely disturbing, and I’ve seen many people — even tech commentators like Scott Galloway mistakenly post AI videos presuming they were genuine across social media.

I don’t know if AI is going to cause social media to collapse in on itself (I hope so). It would be nice to think that if no one knew what was real on the internet, they might go on it less — you’d think it would make it unbearable.

I don’t have social media myself — I sit on the underground train in London and look around at the people who do. I see them swiping endlessly through short flashy TikTok clips. Last night on the underground I wondered, would they notice if 1% of those videos were completely fake? Of course not, they’d swipe right by. They don’t even know half of the people they see. Okay, what about 5%? 10%? What about 50%?

You’re seeing where I’m heading.

The Premise

Alright — let’s get on the same page this time.

We will assume, just for this edition, that wealth inequality is going to continue to worsen at a rapid rate. Just like it did before the world wars. We taxed the rich after those wars ended — from 1945-1970 the typical top income tax was 70-91% in the US compared to 28-37% today. Is it a coincidence that it was more possible for someone middle class to have a typical job and afford a home during the period of fairer tax rates?

Anyway — if you disagree with the premise that wealth inequality is bad and will get worse, you will not agree with the following predictions, I assure you.

We’re also going to assume that AI will muddy any and all visual mediums for magicians. This includes television, social media, and Zoom shows.

I honestly do not know what is going to happen with those — my sense is that in a world of AI slop, the incumbents will win out. The people we already know, like David Blaine, will continue to make TV shows and people will continue to watch them — but it’ll be hard for newcomers to get a show, let alone prove that the videos they make are real and that they themselves exist.

Predictions for Performers

There are three core categories of professional magicians I speak to.

• The wedding and private party magician who is getting less work than usual.

• The corporate magician who is getting a regular amount of work this season.

• The magicians who cater for the wealthy who are making more money then they have ever made before.

I really want to spend this edition going through all of the different options and weighing up the benefits and downsides of each: becoming a social media performer, performing for companies, for example. But the truth is that, really, if you play out this premise and wealth inequality worsens, then the best thing I can do for our members is use this moment is set off a bit of an alarm bell — PIVOT WEALTHY.

The alternative is to perform for the masses at a huge scale, but that will be more of a challenge for most magicians. I think back to Dan White performing intimate Zoom shows during the pandemic for hundreds of dollars a ticket, while Justin Willman was performing low-priced Zoom shows for 3,000+ attendees. You sort of do need a hit Netflix show to sell that many tickets night after night — wheres for the intimate VIP option you need a great show and a solid marketing flywheel.

Besides, if the billionaires continue to suck the wealth from the middle class, there won’t be any middle class left to buy tickets at scale even at low prices.

There is one market that successfully addresses both luxury high net-worth clients and the masses at the same time. There’s real data showing it’s a booming market, and anecdotally, this year I’ve received more consultancy calls from magicians performing in this market for the first time, needing to adjust their act or build out a second show — more of these types of calls than any other.

It’s cruise ships.

They successfully cater to wealthy and older clients with their accessible VIP cabins and luxury upgrades. Meanwhile, middle class guests are attracted by predictable all-inclusive costs for room, food, and entertainment.

Every cruise ship needs at least one magic show, so that’s at least one magic show per week on every cruise ship in the world.

The stats back this trend:

• In the past two years, 31% of passengers were new to cruises.

• 56 new ocean ships on order from 2025-2036 ($56.8 billion investment).

• The luxury cruise ship market is growing faster (~8% + CAGR) than the mainstream cruise market (~4–5% CAGR) in many forecasts.

• The global industry in 2025 is projected to be up by roughly 9% over 2024.

Those 56 new ocean-bound ships represent a need for at least 2,912 annual magic show bookings if each ship has just one magic show on their itinerary per week (it’s often more than one per week). A large number of smaller ships are on order, too.

So, besides getting yourself an agent for cruise ships, what else is there to do?

I’ve written in the past about this idea that all you need is five tricks and five clients. I still believe in the concept — if you want to make more money in magic, you should pursue quality rather than quantity of gigs.

When I wrote that article three years ago, I hadn’t quite appreciated just how much the covid pandemic would worsen the wealth divide. If only I’d watched economist Gary Stevenson’s video predicting this would happen.

Now, I’m recommending pivoting to wealthy clients as a survival technique.

So, what are three of the ways magicians perform for high net-worth clients?