NEP CEO Martin Stewart on $700M Investment, Restructuring, and the Challenges Facing Live Production

NEP CEO Martin Stewart on $700M Investment, Restructuring, and the Challenges Facing Live ProductionBy George Bevir, Editorial Director, SVG Europe

Friday, October 24, 2025 - 8:52 am

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Following a recent equity investment, NEP chief executive Martin Stewart outlined how two years of strategic restructuring have strengthened the company's global foundation. Here 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.

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.

NEP CEO Martin Stewart

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 le

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