New Just For Laughs Fest Owner Tells Ticket Buyers: Laugh or Get a Refund

For a business that’s all about putting people in seats, new Just For Laughs owner Sylvain Parent-Bedard has made a ballsy money-back offer as a once-dominant stand-up comedy showcase for Hollywood returns from the dead.

If Montrealers aren’t bursting with laughter watching JFL galas this weekend at the Place des Arts hosted by Roy Wood Jr., Fortune Feimster, Michelle Buteau and Saturday Night Live castmember Mikey Day, they’ll get their hard-earned dollars back.

“If they’re not happy, we’re going to reimburse them without argument,” Parent-Bedard, a Quebec comedy veteran who has done a pivot to English-language comedy by buying JFL out of bankruptcy in 2024, tells The Hollywood Reporter.

He has big shoes to fill, after JFL over the decades left belly-laughing Montrealers entertained by big names like Jerry Seinfeld, Jimmy Fallon, Lewis Black, Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Larry the Cable Guy and others.

But he remains that confident of his comedy programming for the 2025 edition, which followed a canceled JFL in 2024 and the rehiring of festival veteran Nick Brazao as head of programming.

“Nick and his team have done such a great job and we have worked so well on the galas with the hosts and the comics that I’m ready to tell them (ticket holders) that we need them, and because we need them, we want to have a good relationship,” Parent-Bedard said of winning over Montrealers who sustained JFL through the decades.

That was until Just For Laughs filed for bankruptcy protection in 2024 after running up debts coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, facing price inflation in Montreal and an increasingly disruptive global entertainment business.

Parent-Bedard’s ComediHa! banner based in Quebec City bought the JFL brand and library out of bankruptcy with an eye to reviving the Montreal festival to the point it once again becomes the comedy industry powerhouse it was pre-pandemic.

In what has become a transition year with the 2025 edition, Parent-Bedard is looking for a “solid” 2025 edition to kickstart the comedy festival’s comeback. And down the road, Parent-Bedard is looking to expand on JFL’s roots by holding comedy festivals around the world, including Toronto, Sydney, Australia and Bermuda, while also drawing in new comedic talent from YouTube, TikTok and other digital platforms.

“The vision at the moment is to stabilize Just For Laughs. And maybe it won’t become the same thing as it was, but for sure, it will be something great that everybody, fans and industry people, want to participate on in a new way, but we are not there yet,” he told THR.

That leaves chief programmer Brazao, with an eye to drawing established and emerging comedic talent to Montreal, as in the past, having to walk a tightrope between appealing to a traditional film and TV industry out of Hollywood and an increasingly global entertainment industry where new talent and voices can come from anywhere and everywhere.

“The uniqueness of the festival is trying to have both,” Brazao explains as JFL in the future will also look to new programming, for example by talent that blew up on TikTok or Instagram, while also bringing big-name performers to Montreal to anchor comedy shows.

“We’re going to remain taste makers by being able to show people, hey, you need to trust the brand and you need to trust us, that we’re doing the homework to find these amazing people from all over the world that you don’t know yet. So it’s both,” he explained.

The Just For Laughs comedy festival continues in Montreal through Sunday.