Sit down, honey. This may take a while, but it is interesting and crucial to anyone who books paid speakers or accepts paid speaking engagements. I think I’m the only entity in the paid speaking world that is talking about it publicly and that is a deep shame because it affects nearly every speaker and every event host. Yes, the issue is THAT big.
In 2018, we discovered that a previously trusted third-party booking entity had charged event hosts more than the gross appearance fee we agreed in our signed contracts with the booking entity. The cumulative amount of the overcharges? Nearly $100,000 on just a small number of bookings (less than ten). The money went directly into the booking entity’s pockets without the event host or New Leaf’s knowledge. We were blindsided and, frankly, very upset. We attempted to resolve the issue by direct conversation with the owner of the entity in question. It didn’t work, so we entered arbitration to reach a conclusion. All of our bookings with this entity over the two year period leading up to our discovery were affected. We are intentionally not naming this entity. We know that they are not the only entity engaging in this behavior.
We were shocked that a previously trusted booking partner would behave in this manner. We liked the agents we were working with. We were happy that the entity was generating income for our speakers. We thought we knew the financial arrangements. We didn’t.
For context, the booking entity is a Goliath in the speaker booking industry and is an expert at search engine optimization and AI search optimization, too. As such, the volume of web traffic this entity receives for talent booking inquiries, at scale, is massive. It operates under many different names and URL’s so it is nearly impossible to determine which of the entities showing up in page one of search engine results or cited within AI overview results are actually the same entity under different names. It markets itself to event hosts as an easy, fast, direct way to secure speakers for events. The copy written on its URL’s is specifically written to reassure event hosts that it is a trustable booking partner that negotiates great deals for them, but it is very intentional about its choice of words and the words it doesn’t say. Unfortunately, the average event host is not aware of the intentional omissions and the vulnerability it creates for the event host in legally and discreetly being overcharged.
Notably, the entity does not exclusively represent the talent involved in these deals (which, in plain English, means the booking entity is not duty bound to operate in the financial best interests of the talent), and is not a fiduciary for the financial best interests of the event host / end buyers they secure talent for (which, in plain English, means the booking entity is not duty bound to operate in the financial best interests of the event host / end buyer either).
Unfortunately, the event host / end buyers assume the booking intermediary operates in the event host / end buyer’s financial best interest. That assumption is a dangerous one to make, and in this case, it was simply not true.
Instead, the booking entity inflated the amounts the speaker required to perform each appearance but conveyed these amounts to their event host / end buyers as what the speaker required to perform the appearances. On every single deal we did together.
Because the event host / end buyers involved trusted the booking entity to be accurate and truthful in their communications around the numbers provided, the event host / end buyers believed the financials presented to them represented the most favorable deal for the event host / end buyers to secure the speaker. The event hosts agreed to the booking entity’s financials and entered signed contracts to confirm the bookings. The terms of these signed contracts were confidential, so the event hosts could not contact the speaker or New Leaf to confirm pricing and contractual obligations.
This practice of adding undisclosed / unauthorized commissions and earnings directly violated our gross fee and specified commission policies. In addition, it violated the contract terms we had in place for brokered appearances. This practice overcharges event hosts and we call it ‘skimming.’ Skimming is a material breach of our signed agreements with the entity exclusively representing the event host / end buyer.
As I mentioned above, we entered arbitration to resolve our differences with the booking entity. It took three years, more than $20,000 in arbitration costs, hundreds of hours of prep work on our end, a panel of three arbitrators, and a boatload of stress, but we won our arbitration case. An original contract clause we created to specifically to prevent skimming allowed us to prevail in the majority of our claim against the booking entity. We prevailed on all agreements that had this clause. On the agreements that did not contain this clause, because we contracted those deals prior to the invention of this clause, we did not prevail. The booking entity was allowed to keep the specified commission percentage agreed in our contracts, and then remit the balance of the over charges on the affected agreements to us. After the commission charged by the collection entity, and so much effort, time, and uncertainty over the outcome, the amount New Leaf ultimately received for its efforts provided nominal compensation for its time spent over all those years. In addition, the win didn’t lead to widespread change in the speaking industry. In fact, New Leaf was dismayed to discover that the practice was much more widespread than the one entity involved and although New Leaf initially shared its arbitration winning clause with all interested peers in the IASB (International Association of Speakers Bureaus), to allow them to protect their exclusive speaker clients’ best interests, they discovered that it was being used by entities that wanted to ensure they could legally skim the extra compensation by ensuring their contracts with event hosts and speakers did not contain it.
New Leaf had previously believed that all entities operating as the exclusive representatives for speakers with gross pricing terms would want to protect their clients from this behvior. Unfortunately, that position was naive. It is far more common and more lucrative to operate, legally, with a skimming mindset. As such, exclusive representation of speakers has fallen sharply in the intervening years because it is much more profitable for a booking entity to maximize its own profit on every deal without limiting itself to a deal that adheres to any historical industry norms for cumulative commission or earnings (typically 20-30% commission on the speaking fee, not including travel, on an appearance booking.
Event host buyers and speakers must beware.
Even speakers with exclusive representation or exclusive management must be very clear and candid with their direct representation or direct management and ask them how those entities protect the speaker’s financial best interests and protect them from skimming behavior. Sadly, in my experience, many agents and entities offering exclusive representation and exclusive management do not want to tackle this issue and look the other way on deals involving other booking intermediaries. This behavior, sadly, coupled with buyer ignorance about the issue and scale of it, allows skimming to spread, unchecked, throughout the booking industry.
Our arbitration overall was not a confidential proceeding. The only information that is specifically confidential are the contracts between the booking entity and its affected clients (the event hosts). The arbitration hearing itself, the award of the arbitrators, or the subsequent involvement of Essex County Superior Court in this civil matter involving enforcement of the arbitration judgment for New Leaf Speaker Management are not bound by confidentiality. The documents submitted to that court are public record. Because the entity involved did not remit payment of the award, New Leaf was forced to enter the judgment into the court system in Massachusetts, transfer the judgment to the state where the defendant is based and hire an attorney in that state to serve papers to the defendant and proceed with collection efforts. We take this matter very seriously and use what we learned about the practice of skimming to teach event hosts and speakers how to protect themselves from it.
As I mentioned previously: We do not reveal the name of the entity we arbitrated against. Instead, we educate event hosts and speakers about the danger of skimming, blind trust in AI overview and overreliance on search engine results. AI and search engines are being expertly manipulated by savvy SEO and AIO marketers. Assume that any information provided via AI Overview and page 1 search results must be independently verified to be considered factual and accurate.
Amy Gray, Founder of New Leaf, is available for private consulting to event hosts who hire paid speakers and speakers who wish to protect themselves from skimming. Based on her arbitration experience and her 25 years as a celebrity speaker’s agent for high profile individuals who wanted a bespoke, dedicated agent to handle their speaking and make it easy to work non-exclusively with all event hosts and booking intermediaries, she is uniquely qualified to offer candid, proven guidance on this topic. She is the only person in the speaking industry with this vantage point and track record of success. Amy conducts on-site training and confidential ‘fee integrity’ audits that fully respect all required confidentiality terms in place on signed agreements. Please reach out to Skimming@NewLeafSpeakers.com to discuss pricing and availability for this service.