Data Availability

• The actual success rate of talent acquisition from entertainment industry talent databases is likely unavailable precompiled on public domain, however, early research suggests that success metrics that demonstrate the actual usefulness of these databases may be available through deep analysis of specific databases or through public opinion analysis.

Call Sheet

• Call Sheet is an online database owned by Backstage that provides over 300 pages of industry "companies, organizations, and people." In addition, the database boasts resources for "open mics, production listings, and entertainment-industry unions and support organizations."
• Using the data and calculations provided below, we were able to calculate the estimated jobs cast in 2020 through Call Sheet at 122,218 assuming a consistent production to job ratio.
• Calculations:
• Production to Job Ratio: 8,818(current jobs)/2,886(current productions)=3.06 jobs per production
• Total Jobs Cast: 40,000(productions in 2020)*3.06(average job per production)=122,218
• Database Size: 300+ pages 
• Members; Entertainment Professionals: 100,000+ 
• Talent submissions per day: 100,000+ 
• Current Job Listings: 8,818 
• Current Production Listings: 2,886 
• Current average jobs per production:
• Current Active Candidates: 601,085 
• Calculated job to candidate ratio: 1:68 or 1.47% (8,818/601,085)
• Calculated professional to candidate ratio: 1:6 or 16.64% (100,000/601,085)
• Projects cast using Call Sheet in 2020: 40,000 

Summary

• In our initial search, we scoured media reports, industry reports, and company websites for any pre-compiled data, either quantitative or qualitative, regarding the legitimacy of entertainment industry talent databases. However, this search produced mostly articles and statistics about how to identify talent agency scams. We then performed a deep dive into the talent database Call Sheet to determine if there were any metrics publicly available that could be used to demonstrate the success rate of talent acquisition from the database. Through this search, we were able to find and calculate the current casting statistics which have been provided above.