What's The Future Of Magic?

It’s a question I get asked a lot. It’s a question I think all of us spend a surprising amount of time considering. What exactly is the future of magic? Is there a future of magic? I think we think about it because magic changes a lot. It wasn’t long ago when magic was defined by sparkly dancers and big fancy stage illusions being wheeled onto TV studio floors. What causes the world of magic to change? How will it keep adapting?

You can learn a lot about the future by looking at the past. Magic is often called the second oldest profession. We have this way of surviving everything, even pandemics. The truth is that external factors have always defined magic. Were sparkly dresses and big stage illusions popular long ago because people loved them, or was it because TV cameras were too big and heavy to wheel onto the streets for close up magic specials?

Then there’s the sudden rise of street magic, which feels catalysed by the sudden availability of cheaper, more mobile, HD cameras. Yes, suddenly, TV producers could shoot magic outside the studio in a logistical sense. But, when I talk to executive producers about their switch from studio productions to street magic shows, they’ll tell me the main driving factor was the smaller production budgets. With more channels and each dishing out less money, sending out one magician to the streets with a camera was far cheaper than building a giant studio set filled with cameras and a studio audience.

That sudden availability of affordable HD cameras has also rocked the magic retail industry. When I started in magic, the thought of filming and uploading a magic trick tutorial to the internet was a fantasy. Magic production companies existed to carry the expensive recording and editing equipment burden. To keep costs low, they’d need to press those tutorials onto DVDs in large batches.

Then came The Wire, which later became The Marketplace from theory11. If you want to know about the future of magic, JB from theory11 likely already knows it. The Wire was so incredibly ahead of its time. It allowed anyone to record and upload a magic trick and sell it online. In many ways, JB invented Uber, Airbnb and Fiverr long before these gig economy businesses existed. It’s insane how ahead of its time The Wire was.

The need for magic production companies came to a close due to the availability of camera equipment — most notably, the HD cameras we carry on our phones and the ease of uploading and streaming digital content online. When I first bought ten-minute tutorials from Penguin Magic, I would select the flat-pack option. Someone at the Penguin warehouse would physically remove the cover and disc from the ten-minute tutorial DVD box and ship it inside a flat envelope with free shipping to me in the UK.

Now I can buy a ten-minute tutorial-like it’s nothing, stream it instantly and forget about it forever. I’m talking about ten years ago, btw. Ten fucking years and it’s all changed this much. Luke Oseland was ten-years-old ten years ago.

Right, let’s get on with this before I ramble on.

Entry

The entry point for magic is changing, and it’s changing quite rapidly. I think it’s crucial we track the entry point for magic as it so crucially defines the magic of the following twenty years. David Copperfield was the entry point for a generation of magicians, and he defined said generation. Then came a generation of people who discovered magic via David Blaine, and as such, we got a bunch of Blaine wannabes.

In the UK, we had a generation defined by Paul Daniels and a more recent generation of magicians obsessed with pseudo methods and guessing which hand you’re holding a coin within. That second batch found magic via Derren Brown.

Now it’s TikTok. Yep, that’s right. I genuinely believe most new magicians are now discovering their love of magic by first watching magic on social media. The good news is that more and more good magicians are moving over to TikTok. I think that’s good news.

Retail

There is too much magic. We’ve reached our quota. There’s a reason theory11 do not keep producing magic tricks, and I think that reason is worth figuring out.

There are three types of magic buyers: the curious, the hobbyist and the professional. When marketing magic, I will also consider the dedicated and the loved ones as additional categories. The loved ones refers to every partner, friend or family member who suffers through poorly designed magic shop websites to purchase a trick for their loved one.

The curious buys the most magic in one year, then the hobbyist and then finally the professional with the fewest annual purchases. However, the lifespan of each customer is flipped, with the curious only sticking around for one or two years and the professional magician purchasing magic for many years to come.

The truth is that there is too much magic available. The magic industry is being propped up by hobbyists who are being fooled into believing they need to buy the latest card at any number when they do not need to.

The curious are buying the same beginner tricks each year, and the professionals or the dedicated are purchasing the books and the workers. While these can both sustain brands like Marvin’s Magic and ProMystic at opposite ends—for the majority of magic brands, they must release new magic to stay alive (or pivot to producing high-end playing cards).

But there’s too much magic, and people are starting to figure out that all the newest tricks are just updated versions of old tricks. I believe that the future of magic retail lies within paid communities, content and guidance. We’ll see if this belief pays off.

Live

Live magic always has and always will be absolutely brilliant. The market remains strong in every sense, to the best of my knowledge. Gang shows (I hate this term) continue to be the most cost-effective and risk-averse option for show producers. If the show is a success they can easily plug and play different acts, and spawn off multiple tours around the world.

Nothing sells tickets quite like a magic show, at any scale. Tourists can watch the show, and the whole family can. The college circuit in America remains the best globally, where magicians we have never heard about make hundreds of thousands of dollars without leaving their state. Even several magicians in the UK you’ve never heard about are making a good living touring city venues.

Virtual

It’s staggering to recall how badly magicians refused to try virtual shows. The magicians I know who made the leap earn anywhere between £80-600k more than they did before virtual shows existed.

Nothing works as well over Zoom as magic. It’s engaging and interactive like nothing else. Have you ever tried watching live comedy or music over zoom? Don’t; it sucks.

We’ve seen every variation of virtual over the past few years, from Dan White charging $156 per ticket for a hundred or so spots per show to Justin Willman charging $20 per ticket to a few thousand viewers.

Meanwhile, all of the big corporate fancy companies need to keep their staff working at home happy—and the people responsible for doing so have rather large budgets. Instead of buying drinks, brownies, and lunches for their team at the office, they now happily pay so much money to virtual magicians. Get into one 3,000 person company, and suddenly you’ve booked one hundred virtual shows for their different thirty person teams.

Virtual magic is here to stay. If you haven’t sucked it up and tried it yet, you really should. I even know magicians who do not plan to go back to live shows. Some magicians intend to go back to live but continue to do virtual shows for audiences in other time zones.

Television

It’s not good news. A commissioner in the UK told me several years ago that they do not consider magic shows anymore. Those in the UK will remember a time when there was countless magic TV. It was a time when there was also numerous comedy sketch shows. The commissioner told me sketch comedy and magic shows were deemed too expensive in today’s budgets.

It will be challenging, but not impossible, to sell a TV show as a solo performing magician. It’s why we saw a significant phase of multi-person gang shows, and it’s why we saw a surge of magic on shows like The Next Great Magician, The Amazing Magicians, and Penn & Teller: Fool Us.

Cheap as chips. On comes a magician, they do a trick they already own and perform, and then they sod the hell off. Heck, you don’t even need to pay the performers half the time. Penn & Teller Fool Us might be one of the cheapest television shows to produce. Even those home video shows pay £250 per clip, and there are a lot of clips on those shows.

Suppose you are reading this and would very much like your own television show. I would start by asking yourself why. It’s possible, and it will be hard, and if you know why, you will probably be able to do it. TV magic is where my passion lies, and I’m boarding a flight tomorrow to go and work on another. There’s nothing quite like it, and if you can convince those commissioners that magic is worthy of their smaller and smaller budgets, then you should go and do it.