In its previous Northern Market Intelligence report, Waypoint examined why buyers increasingly value agencies as connected commercial infrastructure rather than standalone service providers. Now, M&A partner Gary Whyte explores the further blurring of brand, entertainment and talent – and the opportunity for businesses capable of bringing creators, content, owned IP and live experiences under one roof.
More than 90,000 people filled Wembley Stadium earlier this year to watch a group of YouTubers play charity football.
Millions more followed the match live on YouTube and, by the end of the day, £6.2m had been raised for charity.
So, what was it? A football match, a YouTube programme, a creator collaboration or a fundraising event?
Actually, it was all four – and that is rather the point.
The company behind the production, After Party Studios, does not fit comfortably inside one traditional industry category. Co-founded by YouTuber Callum McGinley, better known as Callux, it is part production studio, part creator business, part talent partner and part entertainment company.
It produces series for broadcasters and platforms including Sky Sports and Channel 4.0, works with brands such as Red Bull and Just Eat and has developed formats and intellectual property of its own.
Three days after the match, SISTER, the global content company behind Chernobyl and Black Doves, announced that it had taken a majority stake in the business.
Waypoint advised After Party on the transaction and described it at the time as “a deal that doesn’t fit the old boxes”.
An increasing number of businesses no longer do.
The next stage of convergence
In our previous intelligence report, we argued that buyers were moving beyond conventional agency scale and placing greater value on businesses that owned elements of the infrastructure connecting creativity, distribution, data and commerce.
That direction of travel has continued. But the convergence is now extending into entertainment, talent and live experiences.
It was once relatively clear who did what. Brands paid for advertising, agencies created campaigns, television companies made programmes, event businesses staged experiences and creators produced videos for their own audiences.
Those lines have blurred. Brands want to participate in entertainment rather than simply advertise around it. Creators are developing formats, products and live shows. Production companies are working directly with talent and advertisers. Agencies are investing in studios, technology and intellectual property.
The result is not simply a wider list of services. It is the emergence of businesses capable of creating an idea, attaching talent to it, taking it across platforms, bringing it to life physically and retaining a share of the resulting commercial value.
That combination is increasingly attracting buyers.
Deals that do not fit the old boxes
Common Interest, the culture-led communications and entertainment group founded by Anthony Freedman, was an early indication of where the market was heading.
Its portfolio includes brand consultancy 21st Century Brand, creative company Baby Teeth and Amplify, the global agency specialising in experience, entertainment and culture.
In September, that approach received further validation when SISTER took a minority stake in Common Interest as part of a strategic partnership to build brand-backed entertainment IP. It was SISTER’s second investment in this area in five months, following the After Party transaction.
The same convergence is visible closer to home.
Manchester-headquartered LBG Media acquired 75% of social-first agency Uncovered in a deal reported to be worth up to £34m.
On the surface, that is a substantial price for a publisher to pay for an agency. But LBG already has the publishing brands, audience insight and global distribution. Uncovered brings the creative talent, brand relationships and social production capability needed to turn those assets into more extensive commercial partnerships.
LBG described the acquisition as another step towards creating “the world’s leading social entertainment business for young adults”.
Broadcasters and established media groups are making similar moves.
S4C’s commercial arm has taken a minority stake in Middlesbrough’s Wander Films, which works across branded content, platform-first formats and television.
Wander produces work for brands and organisations including Greggs, KPMG and the British Library, as well as broadcasters including the BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5. It is also developing original IP, beginning with its self-published YouTube series Unthinkable.
Co-founder Chloë Clover summed up the positioning neatly: “The lines between brand, platform and broadcast have blurred, and that’s where we operate best.”
Meanwhile, Global’s acquisition of a majority stake in Gary Neville’s The Overlap was not simply the purchase of a popular football podcast.
The Overlap has grown into a talent-led sports media brand with repeatable formats across football, rugby and cricket. Global can now add its distribution, marketing, data and advertising infrastructure to help build a wider network spanning video, podcasts, branded entertainment and live opportunities.
There is a similar logic behind Goalhanger Ventures’ partnership with Yorkshire creator brand Backyard Cricket.
Goalhanger is providing funding and strategic support to help the Wetherby-based creators grow across longer-form video, commercial partnerships, sponsorship and merchandise, with both sides sharing in the upside.
These deals look different, but their underlying logic is consistent. Buyers are backing businesses that combine a trusted audience, distinctive talent, creative capability and routes to monetisation – particularly where there is IP that can be developed across more than one format or platform.
Where live enters the picture
The next stage of this convergence is live.
That does not just mean conventional event production. It includes creator shows, branded experiences, streamed entertainment, audience participation, touring formats and physical activations designed to produce content that continues travelling long after the event itself has finished.
The Sidemen Charity Match is an unusually large example, but its success illustrates the model. The physical event created the occasion. The creators brought their communities. The livestream opened it to a global audience. The format generated clips, conversations and further content, while the collective reach delivered substantial commercial and charitable value.
Live is where audience, talent, content and commerce can come together most visibly.
It is also one of the areas of marketing relatively insulated from the most immediate effects of AI. Technology may help businesses plan, personalise and produce an experience, but it cannot automate the emotion of being in the room or the cultural value of a moment people experience together.
Marketing budgets are beginning to reflect that appeal.
Events led every other category for upward budget revisions in both the first and second quarters of 2026, according to the IPA’s Bellwether reports. Events recorded a net balance of +14.7% in the first quarter and +11% in the second.
Creator investment is growing quickly too. IAB UK’s first dedicated study of the market valued advertiser investment in UK creator partnerships at £966m in 2025, up 20.1% on the previous year and more than twice the growth rate recorded across the rest of digital advertising.
It forecasts that investment will rise by another 26% to £1.217bn this year. That figure covers brand partnerships rather than creators’ wider income from subscriptions, products or events, meaning the total commercial opportunity is larger still.
The important point is not simply that brands are spending more on events and creators. It is that those budgets are increasingly connected.
Brands want experiences that people choose to attend, that give creators something worth sharing and that produce content capable of travelling across social and digital channels. They also want that activity measured against tangible commercial outcomes.
What buyers actually want
In our conversations with buyers, the interest is not generally in event delivery alone.
What attracts greater interest is an experiential business with strong creative capability, established brand relationships and intellectual property embedded within it.
That might include a repeatable format, an owned concept, proprietary technology, exclusive talent relationships or an audience that can be carried from one experience to another.
This distinction is beginning to appear in deal activity.
Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, recently announced its backing for Creator Nation, a new business designed to help creators grow across content, commerce, brand partnerships and live experiences.
Creator Nation intends to acquire and scale creator-management firms and complementary businesses. Its premise is that creators have already built substantial online audiences, but their next stage of growth will depend on turning followers into fans who will buy their products, follow them into new formats and attend physical events.
Other buyers are following suit. Common Interest’s acquisition of a majority stake in Amplify brought a leading experiential agency into a wider communications and entertainment group. In July, Havas acquired Barcelona experiential specialist MUT to strengthen its capabilities across brand experiences and live events.
These transactions do not suggest that every experiential business will suddenly attract a buyer. They show that live becomes more strategically valuable when it forms part of a broader creative and commercial system.
The opportunity for the North
Northern businesses already possess many of the required ingredients.
Manchester brand activation group ZEAL acquired 51% of social-first creative studio Tommy in February, combining ZEAL’s shopper, experiential and partnership capabilities with Tommy’s expertise in social content and entertainment.
A few weeks later, the two businesses launched their first joint activation: a creator-led Pringles campaign featuring YouTuber Tays and 14 contestants undertaking challenges during a coach journey between Manchester Piccadilly and Manchester Airport.
The campaign combined an experiential idea, creator talent, social-first production, multiple brand partners and a consumer promotion. It was not owned entertainment IP, but it demonstrated how complementary capabilities can come together around a single proposition.
In Leeds, Pink Gorilla Hairy Lemon is combining influencers, launch events, PR and wider marketing support for the rollout of George at Asda’s standalone concept stores.
The region also has strong performance marketing expertise, which could become increasingly important as brands demand more measurable commercial outcomes from live activity.
The recent investments in Wander Films and Backyard Cricket were primarily about content, audiences and emerging IP rather than live or experiential capability. Meanwhile, many of the most visible experiential transactions have involved businesses based outside the North.
That leaves space for a Northern business capable of bringing content, creators, performance and live experiences together in a genuinely integrated model.
Screen Yorkshire has already recognised the wider opportunity. Its growth strategy makes building a creator economy one of seven priorities for 2026 to 2029.
Chief executive Caroline Cooper Charles has said the ambition is to make Yorkshire “not just a great place to make content, but a great place to own it”.
That distinction matters.
The North has no shortage of agencies, creators, production companies, sporting brands, venues or technical expertise. The opportunity is to retain more of the IP, equity and repeatable revenue created when those assets come together.
Building for the next wave
So, what does this mean for founders?
Businesses that create and own formats or creator brands, particularly those capable of extending those properties across social, live and commercial partnerships, are attracting attention.
More conventional agency models face a harder task, particularly where they lack strategic level relationships, proprietary technology, retained rights or a capability that is difficult to replicate. Routine content production is also coming under greater pressure as AI drives down marketing budgets and challenges traditional fee structures.
It also helps to own IP. It will add to your value, but don’t expect it to carry a valuation on its own.
Buyers still want the fundamentals done extremely well: great work, retained clients, healthy margins and a depth of leadership that does not require its founder to attend every meeting.
Businesses working with creators must also be clear about what they actually own. Buyers will examine how much revenue is retained, how much passes through to talent and how dependent the business is on a small number of creators or clients.
Founders should also decide what they want before beginning conversations with investors or acquirers.
Too many drift into unstructured discussions without establishing whether they want investment, a strategic partner or an eventual exit. The best partnerships form around chemistry and a shared view of what the business could become. Without that alignment, the first serious obstacle can quickly become the stumbling block.
At Wembley in April, nobody needed to decide whether they were watching a football match, a YouTube show, a creator collaboration or a charity fundraiser.
And buyers increasingly do not need to make that distinction either. The most valuable businesses are being built between the old categories rather than comfortably inside them. The North already has the creators, agencies, production talent, performance expertise and live infrastructure. The question is who will combine them first – and, crucially, who will own what they create.
