How Google Is Killing Entertainment & Why You’re Paying More

Updated June 2026

I can still remember the days when google was useful. When their mission was to provide you the best and most accurate response to your search query.

Back when it was free.

Wait a minute. Isn’t google still free now? You might well ask.

In practical terms, no it is not free, and perhaps it never was, but now the costs, always well hidden, have skyrocketed; and that is damaging corporate entertainment in ways that really do affect you even though they are harder to see.

Let me explain.

The Rise of The Lists, The Brokers and The Directories

A decade ago if you were to search for “corporate variety entertainers Sydney”, google would show you a page with many options, most of which were actual entertainers, and perhaps an article on corporate entertainment in general and maybe a review or two.

You asked Google, and your answer was a list of mostly what you wanted.

Try it now. Use the search phrase “corporate variety entertainers Sydney”

Every single result on page one points you to an agent, an entertainment broker or a directory site. Every single one of those sites will need to get money from either you directly or more likely by adding a margin on the entertainer’s charges. Some will charge the entertainer simply to be listed. (One site will email the artist with a demand for $20 -$30 just to forward your request to them each time you make a request.). None of them will connect you to the entertainer for free.

You searched, and what you got was a list of people who make money by providing you with the results you wanted and that google used to give you for free, back when it was useful. Before the rise of the intermediaries.

Your next click comes with a substantial but well hidden price tag. Someone is going to be paying and ultimately it is you. Not for the entertainment, but for that click. And not just a few bucks, but literally hundreds.

You’ll not see a single comedy stage hypnotist or balloon animal maker unless you scroll long way down.

Why is this a problem for you?

As an entertainment purchaser you’re probably thinking that this is no big deal, you go to those sites, they connect you to an entertainer, and everyone is a winner. And what if the artist paid $30 to get your info, that’s not so much really?.

Here’s the problem: Those sites are not cheap - and you’ll likely be paying 20 - 40% more for that act versus booking directly (you can actually just search for the act once you know their name). They go to great lengths to give you the impression that you are getting a free service. But they simply are not free. Like food delivery services, the extra costs are built in so you dont see them. But they are real.

And $30 doesn’t seem like much but for the artist they will need to pay for several leads to get one booking. And they need to recover those costs from the ones who book. The others dont pay, and some even simply ghost.

Most of those listing sites also have a very limited range of artists. Not every artist is listed everywhere. Maybe there are enough cover bands for it not to matter that you only see 10% of the options. But what about variety artists like trapeze acts, shadow puppeteers, etc.?

As soon as you are considering anything remotely unusual, looking for delight and amazement, the true variety performers, you’ll be faced with a very limited choice, artificially constrained by those directory sites, and served at an inflated price. You might just end up with another variation on what you had last year and the year before.

Why Doesn’t Every Artist List Everywhere?

This is easy to answer. Not every agency can be bothered to list everyone, and many sites require payment or a commission to be listed. In return for literally nothing. Or worse, when you inquire for artist, they simply refer one of their mates and tell you your choice is not available. This happens. It has happened to me. It is simply not worth the effort to list everywhere even if that was possible.

One agency I approached a few years ago responded with “we already have a stage hypnotist”, I asked them if they already had a band (yes I can be sarcastic). Just for the record, we are not all the same. That’s the point of “variety”.

Even if creating such listings were free to the artist, there’s a considerable overhead in setting them up and maintaining them, after which you mostly will hear crickets. And they are not free, I think I mentioned that previously.

So What Can You Do?

If you are really looking for something different, when the usual won’t do, you’ll need to up your searching game. Or try different search engines (Duck Duck Go or even Bing (gasp)).

If you see an act you might like - search them out and contact them directly.

If the act really does have a true agent, they’ll refer you to them for the booking anyway, but in most cases they’ll happily deal with you directly.

It’ll be faster, and a better deal for everyone.

And Now There’s AI

You might think AI search would fix all this. You ask a chatbot for corporate variety entertainers in Sydney, it reads the whole web in a second, and out comes the perfect answer. No more scrolling, no more brokers.

It can work that way. But not by default.

Here’s the thing. The AI assistants are reading the same web I just described to you. The one where page one is brokers, agents and directories all the way down. So when you ask the obvious question the obvious way, you’ll often get the obvious answer back: the same intermediaries, now wrapped in a confident paragraph that sounds like it settled the matter for you. There’s no page two to scroll past this time. The layer between buyer and entertainer is thickening, and AI can quietly become one more part of it.

So the cost doesn’t disappear. It just gets harder to see again. We’ve been here before.

But there’s a better way to use these tools, and it’s the same principle as before - you just have to ask properly. Don’t ask AI to hand you a list. Ask it to name the actual performers behind the category. Ask who the comedy stage hypnotist is, not which agency books one. Ask it to find a performer’s own website rather than a directory listing. Then go direct.

Used that way, AI does the tedious part of what I suggested earlier - tracking down the real act behind the result - faster than you ever could by hand. The skill is the same one it always was. Know that the easy answer has a hidden price, and do the small bit of extra work to get around it.

And you’ll get some really fun, unique and engaging entertainment for your next corporate event.