Buyers

Standard Terminology

• A Buyer is a person or organization paying for client services, or paying UTA directly, such as in a consulting services agreement
• A Parent Buyer is a buyer that has a controlling interest in another buyer party
• The Legal Name of a business is the official name that appears on the formal documents filed with a state or federal government
• A Trade Name, also commonly known as a “Doing Business As” (DBA), fictitious name or assumed name, is the public-facing name a business uses to operate and present itself to customers
• A Venue is a location where a client performs or appears
• An Event, such as a festival or concert series, is a recurring event. Buyers for an event book talent for each instance of the event.
• Individuals that buy on behalf of Buyer organizations are called Buyer Contacts.

What is a Buyer?

A Buyer is a person or organization paying for client services, or paying UTA directly, such as in a consulting services agreement. In touring, a buyer pays to have UTA repped musicians or comedians perform at designated venues; Production companies act as buyers for film and TV talent; Sports organizations are buyers for repped athletes; and buyers are the entities purchasing ads within Digital Brand Architects (DBA).

Legal Identity

Buyers enter into contracts for the services of UTA clients. To facilitate this, Buyer companies are recorded in Auth Data based on the legal name under which they are registered to conduct business. This registration is made with state and/or federal government depending on the country in which they do business.

Legal business names are distinct from trade names under which a Buyer may use as their publicly facing name. For example, the Punchline comedy club in Atlanta may use “Punchline - Atlanta” as a trade name when their official registered business name is “Court Jester, L.L.C.”

Individuals may also act as Buyers. Individuals use their own names as their legal business names. Individuals may also represent themselves publicly using a trade name.

Buyers in other roles

It is important to note that a party acting as a Buyer can also act in other capacities within the context of UTA. Buyers could also be UTA clients, employees, talent, sports teams, or other roles defined in Auth Data. See the Role node definition and HAS_ROLE description for more information about other roles in Auth Data.

Defining a Buyer in Auth Data

As a matter of practice, the primary driver for determining whether a buyer is listed in Auth Data is whether the organization is a registered business entity within the state, province or country in which they operate.

Most countries maintain publicly accessible databases where business registration information is readily available. However, business entity information can still be difficult to track down and does require the DMO to do investigation work to source required information.

Below are common considerations taken into account by the DMO when sourcing Buyer information:

Foreign Entities

The primary state in which businesses in the United States are registered is called the state of incorporation (also referred to as the domicile state, formation state or home state). Businesses are allowed to operate, such as hire staff, in other states so long as they register as a foreign entity (also called foreign qualification) in those states.

In the context of Auth Data, the DMO only views a business registered in the state of incorporation as a legal buyer. Affiliated offices in states where the business is registered as a foreign entity are logged as regional office addresses of the main buyer.

For example, "The Bowery Presents LLC" is a registered business in New York state based on its state of incorporation. They have regional offices in Baltimore (MD), Philadelphia (PA), and Boston (MA) where each is registered as a foreign entity. Within Auth Data, the entity in New York is set as the main buyer party and the three regional offices are set as addresses of type "RegionalOffice" to that party.

Trade names

Trade names are often used to disguise official business names for various reasons. Many state registries do not track use of trade names, which makes it difficult for the DMO to associate a trade name with a legal business name.

While the DMO will use all available resources to determine the legal business names behind every trade name, it is important for the requesting party to proactively collect buyer information, including trade and legal business names, as early as possible in the booking process and relay that information to the DMO.

Sole Proprietors

Buyer parties that are individuals (not organizations) will not typically be registered within official registries. In addition, sole proprietors will frequently use trade names as their public-facing names, further obscuring the name of the individual buyer. It is important that frontline teams proactively determine whether the buyer is an organization or an individual and obtain the sole proprietor’s name.

Under no circumstances will the DMO log an individual buyer with just their name. In order to disambiguate one Buyer from another with the same name, frontline teams must provide at least one additional form of identifying data such as an address, tax/VAT id, phone number or email address.

Determining a contact from an individual Buyer

Contacts within a buying organization, such as a buying company’s CEO, are not logged into Auth Data as individual buyers. These are Buyer Contacts and are instead added as Contacts into Auth Data. Their role within the buyer organization is logged as an appointment with the company to one of a set of pre-defined job roles.

The DMO and frontline teams should use available information such as the domain names of contact email addresses and company websites (including legal pages such as privacy policies or terms & conditions) to determine if an individual belongs to a Buyer organization.

Identical business names in different jurisdictions

Particularly in the United States, there are no rules preventing a business in one state from using a business name that is identical to a business name registered in another state.

Like trade names, the DMO will use available information, such as the business address of the Buyer, to determine the correct entity to log into Auth Data. However, it is crucial for the requesting party to provide enough information about the buyer or to assist the DMO via email/slack in making that determination.

Private Companies

Information disclosure requirements, especially in the United States, differ considerably between private and public companies. Certain information, such as tax ID numbers, are required disclosure information for public companies but not for private companies.

The DMO will attempt to source as much information as publicly available about private companies, but some information may be limited (omitted) from an entry in Auth Data if the DMO or the requesting party is not able to source the information about the Buyer.

Corporate Structures

Large buying organizations may create complicated corporate structures that are only partially (or not entirely) publicly disclosed. More information about how the DMO will approach these situations is articulated in the Buyer Hierarchy section below.