The former parent company of the Revolt TV digital entertainment platform into a single entity, Offscript Worldwide, with busy labels in music management (440 Artists), creator economy management (Rebel House) and brand and experiential marketing (Six Zeros).
The goal is to provide Offscript’s advertising and sponsorship partners easy access to the young, multicultural urban audience that Revolt’s TV and streaming channels gather. It’s a big bet that talent that emerges from social media channels will be crucial to fueling big entertainment franchises of the future.
Offscript Worldwide, headed by former Revolt CEO Detavio Samuels, threads together the capabilities needed to run a next-generation media company. Management arms to find promising music and creator talent for TV, social media and podcast platforms and brand partnerships. In success, those relationships will yield products and services as well as licensed merchandise that generate profits that Offscript will share in.
“For us this is the culmination of a strategy we’ve been working on for the last few years,” Samuels told Variety. “It’s our aspiration to be the No. 1 company helping brands generate attention. Cultural relevance turns into results. We are uniquely positioned to be able to do that in a one-stop-shop.
The rebrand and expansion of Revolt’s parent company comes two weeks before the company’s founder Sean “Diddy” Combs is scheduled to face trial on federal charges of racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs’ trial in New York is scheduled to begin May 5. Combs founded the company in 2012 but held no operational role for many years. The company cut all ties to Combs and he no longer has a stake in the company as of 2024, following his indictment.
Samuels emphasized that he’s been working on the transformation of Revolt from a company based in a linear cable channel to a diversified platform. Samuels said the biggest challenges in the coming years will be to convince advertisers not to pigeonhole the company as a niche buy, especially given the Trump administration’s shameless bullying of corporate America on any activities focused on diversity, civil rights or equity considerations.
“Revolt’s viewership is two-thirds people of color and 33% white. We’re trying to use this moment of becoming Offscript to force brands to understand who our audience really is, not what they imagine it to be,” Samuels said.
Samuels joined Revolt as chief operating officer in 2020 and was promoted to CEO a year later. After Combs’ downfall and exit from the ownership group, Samuels led the restructuring effort to make Revolt an employee-owned venture. He’s been laying the stepping stones for a media-social-commerce eco-system ever since.
“We need to prove to brands that we can help them drive sales and conversion by connecting them to the dopest creators and culture,” Samuels said. “We’re not building this thing for what media was. We’re headed for a world that is more diverse where creators power everything.”
