Why Live Nation Is Investing in the Business Behind Digital Creators

By Ricardo Estevez

The creator economy is increasingly becoming part of the traditional entertainment business. Live Nation’s latest investment makes that movement particularly visible.

On October 1, Live Nation announced its backing of Creator Nation, a new company led by Alexis and Scott Fisher that plans to acquire and grow creator-management firms and adjacent businesses. Creator Nation will also provide services spanning content, commerce, brand partnerships and live experiences. Live Nation is providing financial and strategic support for the venture.

The distinction matters. Live Nation is not simply investing in individual creators. It is backing a company designed to invest in and support the businesses surrounding them.

For an entertainment industry that spent years treating digital creators as something adjacent to traditional talent, Creator Nation arrives at a moment when that separation has become increasingly difficult to maintain. Creators can now build audiences large enough to support consumer products, television projects, live appearances, touring and brand partnerships before entering many of the institutions that traditionally developed entertainment careers.

Creator Nation is being constructed around that reality.

Its announced strategy includes acquiring creator-management firms and related companies. Live Nation has said the first acquisitions are expected in the coming months. The amount of Live Nation’s investment has not been publicly disclosed, and Creator Nation has not announced which businesses it intends to acquire. Those details remain ahead. What has been announced is a company built specifically to bring capital and additional business resources into creator management.

Scott and Alexis Fisher arrive with experience building businesses across different parts of that market.

Scott Fisher founded Select Management Group, which was fully acquired by Propagate Content in 2025. According to Live Nation, Select represents more than 500 creators with a combined audience exceeding one billion. The company’s work has moved beyond conventional talent representation, including co-producing Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and helping create consumer brands Hairitage and Sacheu. Live Nation says those brands have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

Alexis Fisher founded Timeline Management, whose work has connected talent management with live entertainment. Timeline has brought properties including Gracie’s Corner, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and cast members from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives into live experiences. Live Nation acquired a majority interest in Timeline in 2024. Timeline will remain separate from Creator Nation.

That earlier investment is important because Creator Nation is not Live Nation’s first step into this part of the entertainment business. Its relationship with Timeline had already given the company a position in a management business working across creators and live experiences. Creator Nation extends that interest through an announced acquisition strategy aimed at creator-management companies and adjacent businesses.

The Fishers describe a market in which creators increasingly require more than representation.

“We both started in the space in the prehistoric days of the creator world,” Scott Fisher told The Hollywood Reporter, explaining that many of the resources available today did not exist when they were establishing their first management companies. Creator Nation, he said, intends to provide resources that can help management companies operate more effectively and think further ahead.

That becomes particularly relevant as the relationship between creators and audiences moves beyond the platforms where those relationships originated.

A creator may reach an audience through YouTube, TikTok, Instagram or another digital platform, but the commercial business around that audience can now extend into entirely different parts of entertainment. Live appearances, consumer products, television, brand partnerships and other ventures can create relationships that do not depend entirely on continued visibility within a social feed.

Scott Fisher described that challenge in particularly direct terms. “We think the whole idea of renting attention will go away,” he told The Hollywood Reporter, arguing that creators need ways to turn passive followers into audiences willing to show up and support what they build.

Live entertainment is one part of that strategy.

Alexis Fisher told The Hollywood Reporter that she sees an opportunity to move relationships developed online into physical experiences, whether through brand partnerships, meet-and-greets or touring. “It’s not just about the followers anymore,” she said.

That idea places Live Nation in familiar territory.

The company already operates across concerts, touring and other areas of live entertainment. Creator Nation gives it a relationship with a business intended to help creators and their management companies expand into some of those same areas. Live Nation President and CEO Michael Rapino said creators are increasingly building careers that resemble broader entertainment businesses, with opportunities spanning “content, live, brands and commerce.”

Creator Nation’s model is also intended to extend beyond companies it acquires.

Alexis Fisher told The Hollywood Reporter that management firms and creators will be able to use individual services without necessarily entering exclusive management relationships. A company could seek assistance developing a live experience or brand partnership without transferring its entire talent business to Creator Nation. She compared the approach to a restaurant menu, with clients selecting the services they need.

That structure potentially gives Creator Nation two paths into the market: acquiring businesses and providing services to companies that remain independent.

It also reflects the variety of businesses now operating under the broad definition of creator. Scott Fisher said the company is interested not only in highly visible YouTubers but also in creators with substantial businesses inside narrower communities. Creator Nation’s publicly stated strategy is therefore not limited to personalities with the largest follower counts. It is interested in the businesses that can be developed around different kinds of audiences.

That is where the announcement becomes relevant to the larger entertainment industry.

Digital creators once occupied a relatively distinct corner of media. Today, the boundaries between creator, entertainer, entrepreneur and media company are increasingly difficult to separate. A personality can build an audience independently, develop a consumer brand, appear in television, sell tickets to a live event and maintain a direct relationship with millions of people without following the traditional sequence through which entertainment careers were once constructed.

The businesses supporting those creators are evolving alongside them.

Creator Nation represents one newly announced attempt to build around that change. Instead of waiting for creators to cross into traditional entertainment, the company intends to invest in the management businesses already helping them develop careers and provide additional services as those careers move across different categories.

There are still important limits to what can be said about the venture today. Creator Nation has not announced its first acquisitions. The size of Live Nation’s financial commitment has not been disclosed. The economics of future acquisitions, the companies that will participate and the eventual reach of the business remain unknown.

Those unanswered questions matter because Creator Nation is currently an announced strategy rather than a demonstrated consolidation of the creator-management industry.

But the decision already made is consequential enough to examine.

Live Nation is putting capital behind a company designed to acquire and support businesses that manage digital creators. The executives leading it have already worked across management, consumer products, television and live entertainment. And the company is being built around the premise that creators increasingly require the same kinds of business systems that have long existed around traditional entertainment talent.

The creator economy does not need to replace traditional entertainment for this development to matter.

It is increasingly becoming part of it.