The story
From rent-a- + crowd. The term is derived from a fictional company, Rentacrowd Ltd., mentioned in the Peter Simple (Michael Wharton) columns in the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
rent-a-crowd
Today it means: A group of people who are paid to attend an event to increase attendance figures, rather than attending of their own volition. Full definition →