Livespot Expands To Build Africa’s Creative Infrastructure

Livespot, the integrated creative powerhouse behind some of Africa’s most significant cultural moments of the past decade, Monday unveiled a sharpened five-vertical operating model and announced University of Side Hustle, its first original scripted feature film.

The dual announcement marks the most significant structural evolution in the company’s twelve-year history and signals a deliberate move from producing Africa’s most-watched cultural moments to owning the infrastructure behind them.

African music is headlining global festivals. Nigerian films are being acquired by the world’s largest streaming platforms. African designers are sitting front row in Paris and Milan. But global attention alone does not build an industry.

Africa’s creative economy is valued at close to $59 billion and projected to support 20 million jobs by 2030, according to UNESCO and the African Development Bank.

Capturing that opportunity requires more than talent. It requires companies that can develop intellectual property, produce world-class content, build the environments, host the audiences, connect the talent, structure the partnerships and turn cultural attention into lasting enterprise value.

That is the system Livespot has spent twelve years building, and is now formalising.

“The first phase of Africa’s global creative rise was about visibility. The next phase is about ownership, structure and execution. The world already knows African talent is powerful. The real question now is who is building the systems that can carry that power into the future. That is where Livespot has always been focused,” said Darey Art Alade, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Livespot Five verticals. One company.

Livespot has been previously described as an events company, a production house, and an experiential agency. Each description captures part of the story; none captures the scale.

The company now operates across five interconnected divisions, each engineered to own a distinct dimension of the African creative economy: Livespot Studios, the award-winning film production arm, produces film, television, music, audio and post-production for broadcast, streaming and brand clients.

Credits include The Voice Nigeria, Last One Laughing Naija, Amazon Prime Video’s first African Unscripted Original, and The Real Housewives of Lagos for Showmax, which earned Deola and Darey Art Alade two AMVCA 12 nominations earlier this year, for Best Unscripted Series and Best Costume Design.

Livespot Scenic builds the event set designs, stages and environments behind Africa’s most-watched broadcasts and most ambitious brand activations, from AMVCA 10 and 11 to the Heineken House UEFA Champions League experience and the Fenty Club.

Livespot Spaces designs, owns and operates the premium event venues where African culture happens.

Its current flagship, the Livespot Entertarium in Lekki, has hosted Amazon’s Gangs of Lagos premiere, the NBA Finals watch party, The Voice Nigeria Season 3 production base, Meta’s Flex Naija Creators experience and more.

A next-generation 3,395 sqm Entertarium opens in Ikoyi in 2027.

Livespot Experiences handles experiential marketing and produces the live cultural moments, from owned festivals including Livespot X Festival (Cardi B, Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tems), Detty December Fest (Gunna, Busta Rhymes, Diamond Platnumz), and Love Like A Movie (Kim Kardashian, Ciara, Kelly Rowland), to brand and institutional work for Meta, Disney, Nestlé, Access Bank, the Federal Government of Nigeria, and the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs.

Livespot Icons is the group’s talent partnerships and bookings agency, not a management company. It works alongside artists’ existing teams to broker festival bookings, brand partnerships, ambassador deals and casting opportunities across film, television, streaming and live events.

“Studios produces. Scenic builds the environments. Experiences delivers the live moments. Spaces hosts and houses the work. Icons supplies the talent,” the company said in a statement outlining the model. “A single brand activation, festival, or
production can move through all five divisions inside one group, with one creative standard maintained throughout.”

University of Side Hustle: the IP ownership model meets cinema Livespot’s first original scripted feature film, University of Side Hustle, produced by Studios, built by Scenic, premiered at a Spaces venue, with Icons supplying talent.

A live illustration of what the five-vertical model is designed to do. Entertainment Week Africa exports the model to Los Angeles and London.

Earlier this year, the company launched EWA Creative Connect in Los Angeles and London, bringing investors, executives and cultural leaders from organisations including Warner Records, Diageo, Amazon, the British Film Institute, Afrexim Bank, MBO Capital, DramaBox and Adobe into direct engagement with Africa’s creative economy.

The aim: to broker partnerships that integrate African talent and infrastructure into international creative and commercial pipelines.

The flagship EWA Convergence in Lagos has already become one of the continent’s most active dealmaking environments for creative-economy founders. Its Deal Room has given many young entrepreneurs their first experience of pitching to institutional investors, with four companies attracting live investor interest in the most recent edition.

“African creativity has never lacked talent, imagination or global appeal. What has often been missing is the connective tissue; the companies that sit across content, capital, live experience and infrastructure and make them work as one
system. We are not just producing moments. We are building the architecture that helps African culture move with power, structure and ownership,” said Deola Art Alade, Founder and Group CEO, Livespot. “Africa’s creative economy is moving from global attention to global power. The organisations that will define the next decade will be the ones that have already built the infrastructure to carry it.”