What other firms provide 'crowds for hire' services in the U.S. and how do their practices compare?
Executive summary
The U.S. market for “crowds for hire” is small but diverse: a handful of specialist firms openly sell paid attendees, actors, paparazzi and protestors while broader event-staffing and promotional agencies offer overlapping services such as greeters, crowd gatherers and crowd-management staff [1] [2] [3]. Practices vary from openly marketing political and PR stunt services to operating as conventional event staffing companies; controversy centers on transparency and alleged astroturfing [4] [5].
1. Who the specialists are: Crowds on Demand and its peers
Crowds on Demand is the most visible U.S. firm that explicitly markets hired audiences — offering actors as fans, paparazzi, security, unpaid or paid protesters and advocacy services across many U.S. cities — and publicly describes rapid deployment, phone-banking and full campaign-style work [6] [2] [7]. Reporting and older trade stories also name other niche entrants such as Crowds for Rent and U.S. casting shops (e.g., Extra Mile Casting tied to a high-profile political campaign) and international precursors like Ukraine’s Easycrowd and the U.K.’s Rent a Crowd [1] [8] [6].
2. What specialist firms actually sell: services and scope
These specialist firms propose everything from “celebrity arrival” paparazzi stunts and room-fillers for events to organized rallies, scripted speakers and even coordinated media outreach and phone-banking; their promotional copy emphasizes turnkey campaigns and nationwide reach [2] [9] [7]. InfluenceWatch and corporate materials confirm the political and corporate uses, and note that Crowds on Demand claims to serve Fortune 500 clients as well as political actors [4] [9].
3. How pricing, scale and composition compare (what’s documented)
Independent explainers of the “rent-a-crowd” model report ballpark rates for rent-a-crowd services — often $15 per hour or roughly $50 per gig per person — while vendor sites advertise rapid mobilization of hundreds of people for trade shows, rallies or PR stunts; public-facing vendors tout cost-effectiveness versus sponsorships [5] [2] [9]. Detailed, verified pricing and labor practices for most specialist firms are not disclosed in the provided reporting, so precise comparisons beyond these published estimates are not available here [5] [2].
4. Adjacent market players: event staffing, crowd management and models-for-hire
A broader commercial ecosystem includes event staffing and crowd-management companies (BEST Crowd Management, Elev8/Eleven8 and similar firms) that specialize in safety, ushers and security rather than simulated support, and casting/model agencies that sell “crowd gatherers” for trade shows and booth traffic [10] [11] [3]. These businesses overlap in function but typically frame their work as legitimate hospitality, safety or promotion rather than political advocacy [10] [3].
5. How practices differ on transparency and political use
Specialist crowd firms have a track record of opaque client lists and nonpartisan claims but face criticism for facilitating astroturfing and deceptive appearances of grassroots support; investigative reporting and watchdog profiles document controversies, client denials, and legal disputes involving Crowds on Demand [4] [6] [8]. By contrast, mainstream crowd-management and staffing companies operate under event contracts and venue oversight and are less frequently implicated in political astroturf controversies in the cited material [10] [11].
6. Risks, ethics and open questions
Journalistic and expert commentary frames rent-a-crowd work as legal but ethically fraught because it can mislead publics and distort perceptions of support; scholars and critics argue disclosure should be required, while vendors defend their services as standard PR and marketing tools [1] [5] [4]. The sources do not provide comprehensive data on worker treatment, vetting, or the prevalence of subcontracting across providers, so those remain open reporting gaps [2] [6].