Night Acquires Experiential Supply // Pursues $100B+ Market in Creator x Events

October 24, 2025 by Chris Erwin

RockWater Roundup

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Today we discuss Night’s acquisition of Experiential Supply Co., an experiential productions and attractions company for brands, studios, and agencies. We analyze deal details, strategic rationale, the multi $100B+ experiential market, and the shift toward creator-led IRL events.

Let’s break it down…

–SELLER: Experiential Supply Co–

Overview

Experiential production and attraction company for brands, studios, and agencies
Specializes in custom, from-scratch concepts and productions to create high impact moments
Founded by Jasen Smith in 2017
16 associated members via LI
Based in Los Angeles

Founding Story

Founded Experiential Supply Co. in 2017, positioning company as innovative experiential production firm creating custom concepts versus off-the-shelf programs
Built early reputation with Warner Bros., Disney, and Universal on high-profile film marketing activations
Created Yeti Village for Warner Bros. “Small Foot” (2018) and Derry Canal Days Festival for “It: Chapter 2” (2019) in Hollywood
In 2020, expanded into creator activation from Executed Birds of Prey activation with stars Margot Robbie and Ewan McGregor
Covid shutdown on live events sparked consumer-facing pivot idea
Created Haunt O’ Ween drive-thru experience as first consumer-facing project versus traditional studio work-for-hire
Successfully transitioned from exclusively studio work to hybrid model including consumer experiences and large-scale public stunts

Company Highlights

Works with many of Hollywood’s top studios as well as major Fortune 500 brands including Disney, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures
Executed 115+ projects for major brands, studios and agencies, ranging from custom animatronics and pop-ups to conventions
Notable projects include Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (horseback-riding apes in San Francisco) and Jurassic World Rebirth (60-foot Titanosaurus in Manhattan)

Business Lines / Service Offerings

Experiential Marketing Activations…
Large-scale branded stunts and destination experiences for film premieres and product launches
Custom animatronics and interactive installations
Street-level viral marketing campaigns
Immersive Brand Experiences…
Pop-up events and themed environments (It: Chapter 2 Derry Canal Days Festival, Small Foot Yeti Village)
Drive-thru experiences (Haunt O’ Ween, WonderLAnd holiday light display)
Event Production & Activations…
ComicCon activations (Predator Badlands, 25 veiled nuns for The Nun)
Celebrity-driven brand activations (Birds of Prey with Margot Robbie and Ewan McGregor)

–BUYER: Night–

Overview

Next-gen representation platform for artists
Founded 2015 by Reed Duchscher
Reps 250+ talent and artist clients
Based in Austin, TX
120 employees

Founding Story

Reed Duchscher began career as NFL sports agent before pivoting to digital talent management
Started Night Media in 2015 after working with Dude Perfect on brand deals and monetization
Built reputation managing top digital creators including MrBeast from 2018 to 2024
Expanded from talent management into venture capital, content production, and podcasting
In 2022, raised $100M round from The Chernin Group for a Joint Venture CPG fund, and also raised a direct investment from TCG into the Night biz

Company Highlights

Client roster includes Kai Cenat, Hasan Piker, Kalogeras Sisters, Sam & Colby, Safiya Nygaard, The Costco Guys
First manager of MrBeast, helped catapult his growth
Launched Feastables in 2022, est $100M+ 2024 revenue

Business Lines / Service Offerings

Talent – talent division representing some of the biggest digitally native creators
Night Advisory – strategic partner to top brands on digital and creator marketing
The Roost – leading video-first podcast network
Night Labs – a venture studio pairing top operators and artists e.g. Feastables
Capital – TCG-backed fund to invest in / acquire profitable creator-led businesses

Capital Markets History

2025 bought Experiential Supply Co.
2025 invested $4M in seed funding to Rare Candy, a collectibles marketplace
2024 bought Bottle Rocket Management (we advised on sale, our deal analysis)
2024 bought The Roost Podcast Network
2023 bought talent mgmt co LFM
2022 raised $100M from TCG for Night Capital
2022 raised an est high 7 to low 8 figures from TCG

–DEAL DETAILS–

Overview

Announced October 13, 2025
No terms were disclosed

Strategic Rationale

Combines Night’s viral digital expertise with Experiential Supply’s live event production capabilities
Aligns with broader industry trend of creator economy going IRL as audiences crave offline engagement (see below What Else I Find Interesting section for market data)
Night’s creators increasingly launching IRL experiences e.g. Sam & Colby escape room, Kai Cenat’s Little Basketball Association
Enables integrated offering: creators can drive digital awareness while activating physical experiences: (1) Creates an integrated offering for brands, studios, and creator partners, where digital talent can amplify campaigns through social reach and leverage live activations to generate new viral content (2) The synergy enables co-beneficial campaigns: creators extend partnerships into IRL experiences that their fans can attend and share, while brands capture both in-person engagement and online momentum.
“As consumer attention shifts more and more towards digital media, we believe that experiential marketing is one of the few traditional marketing channels that brands can still use to create unique and memorable moments that actually reach consumers,” said Reed Duchscher, Night CEO.
“Through the years we’ve been able to achieve really special organic engagements and virality with our experiences and marketing stunts,” said Jasen Smith, Experiential Supply Co. founder. “With Night leading the pace in the creator and digital space we felt there was a silver bullet offering to have this all under one roof that couldn’t be ignored”
Also from Jasen Smith…“we’re eager and excited to re-imagine how physical experiences show up globally at scale in the digital world. Leveraging the globe’s best creators, and savvy backend digital strategies, we’re going to ensure the worlds and moments we create are unmissable.”

Post-Deal Operations

Experiential Supply Co. continues operating under its brand
Jasen Smith remains with company leading experiential division
Integration with Night’s creator roster for branded activations and fan experiences

–WHAT ELSE I FIND INTERESTING–

The $100B+ market opportunity at the intersection of creators x irl experiences.
When I first read about this deal, I had a bit of a head scratcher moment.
Then our team dug into some market sizing research, and as well as the flurry of activity in creator-driven events. We also reached out to Night’s CEO to get more perspective on their growth angle.
The growth opportunity then became much more clear. Here’s some of the data and trends we looked at…

Market sizing data for the global experiential x creator economies.
North America experiential marketing industry is valued at $54B in 2025, projected to hit $74B by 2035 (3.2% CAGR), with North America accounting for ~40% of total revenue.
Global experiential marketing spend expected at $128B in 2025, with 74% of Fortune 1000 marketers planning increased budgets next year.
Further, consumer engagement of creator-related irl experiences is surging: 41% of US social media users attended at least one creator or fan event in the past year, spanning meetups, pop-ups, and branded festivals.
Then, as it relates to the creator economy, market sizing estimates are around $191B in 2025, and growing to $528B by 2030, a 23% CAGR.

Growing trend of creators increasingly building hybrid IRL + digital businesses.
Some examples…
Sam & Colby – “Asylum: Room 1952” escape room drove over 25M YouTube video views, and sold out 8 weeks of bookings within launch quarter.
Kai Cenat – “Little Basketball Association (LBA)” drew 5.4M cumulative live views across Twitch and YouTube streams, with 30K+ paid arena attendees.
Dude Perfect – raised $100M from Highmount Capital (our deal analysis) to expand its global live-tour franchise and build a Texas theme park. Related to this expansion is the announcement that Dig World, a construction-themed adventure park featured on Shark Tank, is partnering with Dude Perfect to open a new location at Grapevine Mills mall (based in TX) in early 2026. This marks Dude Perfect’s first official venture into the amusement park space, featuring real construction equipment experiences and trick-shot attractions curated by Dude Perfect

POV on the economics of experiential events.
The economics are promising, yet complex.
Of note, our team can uniquely speak to this: our director Michael Booth was previously at the VOID, a location-based entertainment company.
Specifically, events can drive high-margin sponsorship returns, typically in the 10-20% EBITDA range for established tours.
BUT, events demand steep upfront capital expenditures, logistics, and ongoing marketing overhead.
Therefore, the most successful creators vertically integrate via production, merch, and media rights, which helps to offset costs with diversified monetization flywheels.

Night now bridges digital virality with real-world engagement, a strong move to capture more of brand marketer share through a modern suite of social agency services.
Last week we wrote about Journey Further buying Saulderson Media (our deal analysis), which included our POV on how marketing agencies are newly defining the modern social agency services stack.
In this Experiential Supply deal, Night now gets access to six- and seven-figure studio-level budgets through campaigns like Jurassic World Rebirth and Planet of the Apes. I also think of marketing strategy shifts within Indie Hollywood –> per a Hollywood Reporter article from a couple days ago, “Focus Features and others are seeking to create brand loyalty among a growing demo of moviegoers with unique experiences and curated merchandise.”
It positions Night as a hybrid creative-marketing powerhouse connecting creators, brands, and audiences across digital and physical channels.
It also adds proven experiential execution capabilities to Night’s digital-first focus, allowing the company to deliver integrated campaigns from ideation, to on-site activation and social amplification.
There are also parallels to Fever’s acquisition of DICE (our deal analysis), where a digital-first entertainment platform acquired a live-event company to own the whole stack (creation, distribution, and data across the experiential ecosystem). Similarly, Night is making moves to own the full creative-marketing stack, spanning content, creators, and experiential execution.
Night CEO Reed Duchscher, in a direct chat with me about the deal, noted that he believes the “outsized advantage on the brand side” is actually not influencer marketing, which Night already has a strong wedge in. Instead, the “increasing anchor for brand services”, is experiential marketing i.e. that an experiential offering helps modern band agency businesses, like Night Advisory, generate new client relationships and cross-sell various social marketing services like influencer marketing, UGC content, influencer bookings, etc. Further, Reed noted that in talking to various experiential companies, ES and its founder Jasen stood out, and that the ES team had glowing reviews from their blue-chip client base. This made it an easy decision for Reed to pursue the acquisition and bring Jasen onto the Night leadership team.

I’m the founder of RockWater Industries. We do M&A and strategy advisory for creator economy and digital agencies. From buy / sell-side M&A and fundraising, to consumer research and go-to-market planning.

DM me on LinkedIn or email me chris@wearerockwater.com