Top 5 Corporate Entertainment Agencies
As a professional magician a lot of my work is for corporate events, like award ceremonies and trade shows and exhibitions. I get a lot of my bookings through Corporate Entertainment Agencies as opposed to clients booking direct and I have noticed there is real advantage for an entertainer to make sure you are on the books of these entertainment and events companies. I have found there are are a lot of blue chip companies that don’t want to deal with artists and entertainers directly even if it is cheaper for them to do so. I believe the main reason for this is that if anything goes wrong an entertainment agency has a pool of other entertainers that can quickly switch and artist out for if they are sick etc and need a replacement at the last minute. Another reason why a blue chip company may prefer to use and agency is if anything goes wrong they can blame the agency rather then taking the liability of booking a bad performer themselves and finally if the event is big they will have no doubt booked a lot of different genres of entertainment so may just want the convenience of invoicing one client as opposed to a lot of separate individual entertainers.
If you are really interested in gaining more work in corporate events then I would suggest building a relationship with some corporate entertainment and events agencies as they have been my life line for many years. Some of the best UK entertainment agencies that I have worked for over the last few years are the following in alphabetical order.
Contraband Events – Contraband is one of the agencies I have been with the longest and I was their first magician on their books. They have grown considerably and now have something like 1500-2000 artists on their books. They have been very loyal to me, always have paid on time and are very professional I thoroughly recommend them to both artists and end clients.
Corporate Entertainment Agency is one of the new entertainment booking agencies for corporate events on the scene but I have been getting some great work from them recently and have some every large accounts they are a small team but all extremely friendly and I have always been great at paying and giving me the larger corporate events, exhibition and shows. They see themselves as a corporate entertainment ideas company so the events I have done with them they have been very hands on and creative.
Scarlett Entertainment is about 4-5 years old and have grown exponentially since they first contacted me. They contacted me originally to book my quick change act when they only had 5 staff now they have 20-30 staff maybe more and seem to be still growing at at rapid pace, which actually has become a kind of negative for me as it is hard to build and keep a relationship going with their account managers as their staff turnover seems very high. On the plus side they are the fastest payers in the industry and pay you a couple of days after the event which takes a lot of stress off your booking and they gets some really great events.
Sternberg Clarke is a well established ents company with about 25 staff I haven’t done too much work for these guys but the work they have given me has been great and all the staff I have dealt with have been lovely. Definitely worth contacting them to get on their books.