Following a recent equity investment, NEP chief executive Martin Stewart outlines how two years of strategic restructuring have strengthened the company’s global foundation. He discusses reducing debt, accelerating innovation through software and connected solutions like TFC, and positioning NEP to meet rising content demands with greater flexibility, collaboration and sustainability across its worldwide operations.

Last week, NEP Group announced a $700 million equity investment led by new partner 26North, alongside existing shareholder Carlyle, which will remain NEP’s largest investor. The move, says NEP chief executive Martin Stewart, is the culmination of two years of structural and strategic groundwork – and a sign of confidence in the company.

It’s a deal that has been in the making since Stewart was appointed chief executive back in June 2023, when he succeeded Brian Sullivan. “When I took over the role, there was a period of assessing where we were as a business, where the industry was, where our clients were trying to go, and how we could best compete,” Stewart tells SVG Europe.

“Whether it’s the provision of services for DAZN to facilitate the Club World Cup, or whether it’s the continued season-long efforts to showcase the MLS for Apple; these are things that, at the moment, only NEP can do. So our priority is to keep investing in that”

“We had a little bit more debt than I would have liked, but from an internal point of view, I don’t think we were structured correctly, and we weren’t operating correctly to deliver value as a truly global partner to our clients.

“For the last 24 months, we’ve been focusing on our own business health, to be able to better serve our customers, changing how we’re structured, changing the way in which we operate, to create that firm, sustainable foundation that lenders could get behind, and investors can get behind, really, for the next 40 years. And so this [investment] is a real vindication of who we are as a company.”

The $700 million equity investment is led by new partner 26North with a group of co-investors. NEP owner Carlyle is participating alongside 26North and will remain NEP’s largest shareholder, which NEP said reaffirmed Carlyle’s long-term commitment to the company. Carlyle first invested in NEP in June 2016 and then bought the rest of the company from its previous owner, Crestview Partners, in 2018.

NEP also completed a refinancing of its debt, which Stewart says is akin to re-mortgaging a house. Latham & Watkins, one of NEP’s advisors, said NEP’s credit facilities now comprise a $1.45 billion senior secured term loan, a €360 million senior secured term loan, and a $300 million revolving credit facility.

Stewart describes the investment as “incredibly important” for NEP.  He says: “Firstly, on a practical level, it reduces the debt that we have in the business, which reduces the amount of interest that we have to pay, which frees up capital for investing in our people, infrastructure, the solutions that we create for customers, our ability to accelerate our investment in product development, in our dynamic facility creation and new partnerships.

“On a more strategic level, it is a massive vindication of the vision that we have for the future of our business, the way in which we’re running our business, the collaborative ties that we are still reinforcing with our clients, with our customers, the innovation that we’re displaying, the flexibility, the resilience, and the reliability.

“To have somebody like 26North – and obviously Carlyle, who have put more money in as part of the process – clearly believe that we’re on the right track I think is hugely important. Overall, it’s good for our customers, our suppliers and our employees for us to be through that necessary phase and to be focusing now on growing the business.”

26North, described as “a next-generation alternatives platform”, was founded in 2022 by Josh Harris, who is also the founder and managing general partner of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment and the managing partner of NFL team the Washington Commanders. Since launching in late 2022, 26North has grown to approximately $31 billion in assets.

“Josh Harris has a massive track record before 26North when he was at Apollo (the alternative asset management firm co-founded by Harris), but within 26North itself he has a proven track record of growing businesses across many different industries.

“Their portfolio of premier franchises across sports and entertainment aligns with NEP, and they have relationships across our related industries that will be very helpful to us in unlocking opportunities for the future,” says Stewart.

“What attracted 26North to us is that we are clearly the market leader. We’re the only truly global operator, from a media services point of view, and we have in the last two years restructured ourselves to take advantage of that fact. The 25 countries we are in operated very individually, but we’ve now structured those 25 countries into four regions, the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia, and Australia and New Zealand.”

Stewart says that the restructure means NEP can now manage its resources more quickly and efficiently within and across regions, which in turn provides more flexibility and scalability to customers who are described as increasingly global.

For Europe, this restructure in February meant a new organisational grouping of its northern, mid and southern Europe businesses as it looks to “leverage strengths, share group resources and collaborate faster and more efficiently” as part of its “One Europe” strategy with a renewed focus on collaboration, resource and skills-sharing across the continent.

“I think [Harris] sees us living up to our potential as a truly global, one NEP, and I think that as we continue to lean into that, we set ourselves apart from those who can only support within a particular region or country.”

Stewart says the new financial structure will help the company move faster. “We have some very clear priorities about what we’re trying to do, very clear focus on certain regions, types of clients and types of services.

“We’ve spoken before about our evolution of services across much more of the value chain, and while we will continue to make sure that we have fit for purpose, highly competitive OB units, really, what we’re trying to do is to grow the provision of dynamic facilities, and our NEP connected solutions service offering. And I think that this new financial structure will enable us to really lean into that much more quickly than we have been doing.”

Stewart says the surge in global content production presents new challenges for broadcasters and service providers.

“I was with Olympic Broadcasting Services last week. OBS is a very big client of ours – we’re looking forward to working on the Winter Olympics at Milano Cortina with them – and they were talking about the number of hours of content produced in Athens 2004 and London 2012 versus what was produced in Paris, and it’s exponential, the increase in volume.

“Those increases in volume generally create complexity, but that complexity can’t be dealt with the old way. You can’t simply add more trucks; you need to be thoughtful and really lean into creating different solutions to meet that capacity challenge.”

Balancing quality, sustainability, and cost pressures, he adds, is a major challenge. He believes NEP’s regional structure and global collaboration give it an edge in meeting these demands.

NEP’s priority now, says Stewart, is software provision to support complex productions. While NEP has historically grown through acquisitions — including its recent purchase of Dubai-based Seven Production — Stewart says M&A is not the immediate focus.

“Never say never, but our first priority is very much the execution of the growth opportunities that we have in front of us,” says Stewart. “For most of this year we’ve had just this enormous piece of work that we’ve had to execute to get to where we are today. So it’s going to be great to have a considerable amount of more time to really drive new opportunities.

“We’re not just market leading because of our scale and our customer relationships, we also have a lead in service provision. There are things that we’re able to do at the moment that others can’t, and I’m not saying that they never will be able to, but we have a lead at the moment. So, whether it’s the provision of services for DAZN to facilitate the Club World Cup, or whether it’s the continued season-long efforts to showcase the MLS for Apple; these are things that, at the moment, only NEP can do. So our priority is to keep investing in that.

“And then clearly the software side of our solutioning, we really need to keep developing that. TFC (NEP’s software for managing, monitoring, controlling and networking 2110 infrastructure), we’ve talked about in the past, and how we expand that to really take on ever larger and more complex productions is going to be key. It’s key to provide a better service, more efficiently, and for us, a real competitive advantage.

“TFC recently has been at the Club World Cup, the Eurovision Song Contest, the Esports World Cup and just recently at the Ryder Cup. So the development of that side of our service, that whole software provision, is something that we’re very much focused on. And we have some exciting news coming in 2026 on that front, so that’s our primary focus. But never say never. If somebody comes to us with a good deal, then yes, you’re right that there’s a large part of our heritage that is by growing through acquisition. So we’re always going to be open to good ideas.”

TFC, created by NEP engineers in Australia during the pandemic, was made available as a licensed service in April. It connects multiple production units, venues, and studios to manage broadcasts over IP.

On the rollout of TFC as a licensed service, Stewart says: “I think that the main point of it was to create a real showcase for what TFC can do. And I think that it is a very different way of working for clients, and so it’s not a fast sell. We don’t have any sort of particular targets that we’re aiming at. What we’re trying to get people to understand is that we have a very different way of doing something that can be much more efficient and much more reliable for them.”