The Agencies: Who Represents Irish Creators, and What They Take

Ask an Irish influencer agency what it charges and you will get a warm answer about partnership. Ask it for a number and the conversation ends.

We checked every Irish agency we could verify. Not one publishes its commission rate. Not AR Agency, not Matchstick Ireland, not The Millar Agency, not The Collaborations Agency. Only one — Sport Endorse — describes its model at all, and even then the percentage is missing.

That is not a scandal. Talent agencies have never advertised their cut. But it does mean that a 19-year-old in Athlone deciding whether to sign has no published benchmark to judge the offer against, in an industry where 69 per cent of creators already believe they undercharge.

So here is what we could establish.

Who actually represents Irish creators

AR Agency, founded by the former model Andrea Roche, is the oldest and biggest. It describes itself as Ireland's leading talent management and influencer marketing agency, running four divisions — influencers, models, sports and commercial models. Trade coverage puts the roster at 150-plus and names the Godfrey Twins, Aisling Chan, Derry and Tadhg Fleming, Niall Casey, Kirsten Mate Maher and Lauren Arthurs among those represented. It also signed the Gardiner Brothers in October 2020, shortly after they started posting seriously.

Matchstick Ireland launched in August 2022, co-founded by Vogue Williams and Max Parker, whose UK group counts Danny Jones of McFly and Binky Felstead among its investors. Its Irish roster currently lists Williams, Una Healy, James Kavanagh, Paddy Smyth, Greg O'Shea, Holly Carpenter, Louise McSharry, Glenda Gilson, Kevin Penrose, Caolan Ward and Cassie Stokes. Both the Irish and UK arms state that they donate 2 per cent of annual profits to a mental health charity, which is more than most agencies in any sector disclose about anything.

The Collaborations Agency was founded in Dublin in 2016 by Lynn Hunter and had grown past 125 creators by early 2024, roughly half of them earning a full-time income. Hunter is the most quotable person in the Irish industry, and the most useful, because she describes the money without flinching — more on that below.

The Millar Agency opened an Ireland division on 29 January 2024, led by Aoife Rice, with the presenter and designer Anna Daly as its first Irish signing.

Sport Endorse, founded in Dublin in 2016 by Trevor Twamley and Declan Bourke, is the outlier — a platform rather than a boutique, claiming 9,000-plus verified athletes and creators across 85 countries, with offices in Dublin, Indianapolis and South Africa, and named clients including Puma, Kellogg's, Red Bull and PwC. It represents over 100 GAA players.

Two names we were given did not survive checking. We could find no Irish agency called Lockdown or Nine Eighty, and we would not print either without one.

What the cut probably is

Since no Irish agency will say, the honest thing is to give you the international benchmarks and let you do the arithmetic.

Talent-side commission is described by practitioners as 10 to 20 per cent of the value of the brand partnership, with around 10 per cent on retainer arrangements. On the brand side, agency service fees are cited at 15 to 30 per cent of the total budget, with markup models — a £1,000 creator fee billed to the client at £1,500 — and agencies advised to target 50 to 60 per cent gross margin on service work.

Apply the middle of those ranges to a €10,000 Irish campaign and roughly €1,500 leaves on the talent side while the brand pays perhaps €2,000 more than the creator's fee. The creator sees €8,500 of a €12,000 spend.

Is that worth it? Genuinely, often yes. An agency that turns two €2,000 deals a year into eight €5,000 deals has earned its percentage many times over. The question is not whether agencies add value. It is whether anyone can tell, from the outside, which ones do.

The bigger money moved in above them

While Irish agencies were building rosters, the global holding companies bought the entire layer.

WPP acquired The Goat Agency in March 2023. Publicis Groupe announced its acquisition of Influential in July 2024, describing it as the world's largest influencer marketing company by revenue, with 3.5 million creators in network and access to 90 per cent of global influencers with a million-plus followers. And in June 2026 Accenture announced it was buying Whalar — 170-plus employees across the US, UK, Germany, Spain and Ireland, and more than $600 million in creator campaigns executed. That deal closed on 31 July 2026.

Consultancies do not spend that kind of money on things they think are a fad. But they also do not buy businesses in order to leave the margins where they found them.

The part that should worry the agencies

Here is the tension nobody in Dublin brings up at launches.

The Irish agency layer is growing. The global brand-side trend is running the other way. 66 per cent of brands now manage influencer marketing entirely in-house. Only about 11 per cent work through agency partners. The most commonly outsourced function — creator discovery and vetting — is outsourced by fewer than one brand in five.

And the most telling evidence comes from an Irish agency itself. In February 2024 Lynn Hunter's group launched Social Content HQ, a separate operation working with 70-plus creators to produce "banks of assets" that brands post on their own channels, with packages starting from €1,500 and a first-six-months turnover target of €500,000.

That is not influencer marketing. That is content production dressed in influencer clothing — and the fact that one of Ireland's leading influencer agencies built it says more about where this is heading than any forecast. Hunter's own rationale is disarmingly practical: "Every brand needs content more than ever, and we're happy to supply that to them."

We have given that shift its own article in this series, because it changes what a creator is actually selling.

How much of a brand's money is now going here?

Hunter's estimates — and they are an agency principal's estimates, not audited figures, which matters — are striking. In 2023 she said that where 80 per cent of budgets once went to billboards and broadsheets, "up to maybe 70 per cent is put solely towards social and streaming services." In 2024 she said some brands spend up to 60 per cent of their total marketing budget on influencers.

For context, Irish digital advertising spend passed €1.146 billion in 2025, with social advertising alone at €576 million. Influencer marketing is named by the industry as a leading growth driver for 2026 — and is not separately measured anywhere. Nobody publishes what Ireland spends on creators. Not the industry body, not the agencies, not the platforms.

So — is it still about who you know?

Partly, and less than it was.

The case for "yes" is easy to make. Matchstick Ireland launched with a celebrity co-founder and a roster of established names. Agencies sign people who are already visible. Sponsored work clusters in Dublin. And the concentration data is stark: the top 10 per cent of creators globally take 62 per cent of the money.

The case for "no" is Matthew Weldon going viral on his fourth video from behind the counter of an antiques shop, Caroline Mooney building 110,000 followers anonymously while trying to feed a family on one income, and Katie Larkin filming cattle in Galway. None of those three knew anybody. All three now have audiences that brands pay for.

The honest answer is that access has been democratised and money has not. Anyone can get an audience. Converting one into a living still runs through a very small number of gatekeepers — and in Ireland, none of them will tell you what they charge.

A note on the sourcing

Agency details are taken from each agency's own website and from Irish trade and newspaper reporting, with roster names as published. Where an agency's own pages could not be read, we have said so rather than infer. Commission and fee ranges are international practitioner benchmarks, clearly identified as such, because no Irish agency publishes a rate; the €10,000 worked example applies the middle of those ranges and is an illustration, not a quoted price. Acquisition details are from the acquiring companies' own announcements. In-house versus agency figures are from an industry benchmark survey of more than 600 respondents published in May 2026. Lynn Hunter's budget-share statements are her own estimates given in published interviews and are attributed as estimates, not measured data. Irish digital advertising totals are from the industry body's 2025 figures published in May 2026. We found no Irish agency that had ever published a commission rate, and no measure of total Irish influencer marketing spend. The graphics are our own, built from the figures cited above. The photograph is used under the Unsplash Licence, by Amina Atar.