Casting Platform Free For Actors Launches In UK
A casting platform that is free for actors, which its founders are calling an industry first, will launch in a few weeks’ time following a “significant funding round.”
Performeo comes from startup investor Alex Breeden and Thomas Howe, a former finance boss at Metropolitan Gaming.
The pair say the platform has backing from Nosferatu casting director Kharmel Cochrane, ex-Sony Pictures Entertainment CFO Philip Rowley, and Rory Aitken, the co-founder of 42 Management & Production. The platform, which launches January 2026, comes after a capital injection from investors including Paul Forster, the co-founder of recruitment behemoth Indeed. This funding round was described as “significant” by Performeo’s founders.
Performeo will be free to use for actors, individual casting professionals and agents but “enterprise licenses” will be available for organizations, which will come at a charge.
Performeo said more than 3,000 actors have signed up for its waiting list and the founders surveyed 700 from the industry prior to launch.
“Paying for multiple different expensive subscriptions just for the chance to look for a job, without the guarantee of work, is extremely ‘legacy’ and widely not accepted in most sectors,” Breeden and Howe told Deadline. “The casting process is plagued by admin, requiring multiple fragmented costly tools to perform the job and no specific software to cater to volume and the current global nature of casting.”
The pair added that casting platforms “view agents as an afterthought, where we have kept their needs front of mind.” They praised “some of the world’s top investors covering a wide variety of skillsets” for giving Performeo their backing, which will help their casting platform become more “global.”
The landscape for casting in the UK is under the microscope at the moment after actors union Equity lost a high court challenge against casting platform Spotlight that was attempting to force Spotlight to be classed as an “employment agency” and charge lower fees. Equity has appealed and the appeal application has been accepted.
