Which States Are The Biggest Jokers?

Article By Peter Welch

Last Updated: Mar 14^th, 2024

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They say that "laughter is the best medicine," and you’ll struggle to find an American that doesn’t appreciate a bit of comedy in their lives.

Playing jokes is a great way to have fun with friends, family, and teammates. And with so much time spent on the road, many sports teams and athletes lead the way when it comes to goofing around, telling jokes, and playing practical jokes.

On National Tell A Joke Day - many people across the country will engage in some light-hearted trickery at their friends, family, and even complete strangers' expenses.

Ahead of this year’s witty antics, the research team at Gambling.com decided to work out which states are the biggest jokers in America. They analyzed four different data points to measure this: Google search volumes for comedy/joke-related terms, comedy clubs, comedy acts for hire, and comedy meetup groups (all per capita). Does your state have its jokes ready to go, or will it be unable to find its funny bone on National Tell A Joke Day?

Which States Are the Biggest Jokers?

Nevadans Take Biggest Jokers Title

After measuring all the gag-related statistics, Gambling.com can reveal that Nevada is the state with the biggest jokers. Known more widely for having the world’s best online casino sites, performed strongly in all four analyzed categories - including having the highest scores for Comedy Clubs and Comedy Acts For Hire (per capita) across the entire U.S.

With a Final Joker Score of 85.8 out of 100, Nevada is the state that’s best at seeing the funny side of things. It obtained the highest ratings in the comedy clubs and comedy acts, while also having one the highest comedy meetup groups scores (87.5).

New York state are the No. 2 biggest jokers. The Big Apple has the highest number of comedy meetups per capita in the entire country, while also ranking near the top of the comedy clubs (89.5), and comedy acts for hire (85.4) sections. This culminated in a final rating of 79.8.

Not far behind in No. 3 is California, with a Final Joker Score of 79.2. While it doesn’t lead the study in any categories, it performs quite well across the board, particularly in the comedy acts for hire (89.5), and comedy clubs (83.3) brackets.

Illinois and Colorado are in No. 4 and No. 5 respectively, with final scores of 74.2 and 73.9 out of 100.

Which States Have Hurt Their Funny Bones?

Montana was named as the least comedic state in America, with an un-funny Final Joker Score of just 14.5 out of 100. While Big Sky Country ranked above average in the Google search interest category, the state was joint bottom of all three other categories - comedy clubs, comedy acts for hire, and comedy meetup groups (all per capita).

No. 2 in the serious stakes is North Dakota (15.6). Like the leader, it does fairly well in the Google search interest section, but doesn’t register a positive score in the three others. Wyoming (16.1) is almost identical in No. 3 - with only its superior search volumes keeping it away from the foot of the table.

Idaho is No. 4, while Louisiana is No. 5, with Final Joker Scores of 24.6 and 25, respectively. Idaho was joint bottom in two categories, while Louisiana was among the lowest scorers in only one.

Methodology

Gambling.com worked out which State’s residents were the biggest jokers by analyzing these four index points:

Google Trend search volume - by measuring the eight most popular comedy, joke and prank search terms across all states in the past year.
Number of comedy clubs per capita in each state - using Dead Frog and World Population Review.
Number of hireable comedy acts based in each state, per capita - using Entertainers Worldwide and World Population Review.
Comedy-related Meetup social groups - using Meetup and World Population Review.

All four data points were measured out of 100 using the PERCENTRANK formula (aside from Google Trends, which is already out of 100), and an average was found to create a ‘Final Joker Score.’ States were ranked from highest to lowest final score.

All data were collected and corrected on March 21.