Saturday night at TBS wasn’t just a movie premiere. It was history. Black Market pulled the largest film-screening crowd ever recorded anywhere in the world, smashing a record that had stood since 2015.
Everyone’s talking about the movie. Fewer people are asking who got 51,000 people into one place without it turning into chaos and who brought the sponsors to the table.
That’s Damilola Osikoya’s job. Both halves of it.
She’s the CEO of Switch Visuals, officially credited as Event Production Producer for the screening. The title only covers part of what she did. She brought sponsors and partners on board and was closely involved in how the budget got spent.
“The logistics people see is the visible half. The funding is the half that made the visible half possible.”
The shoutouts:
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Osikoya is thanking Zenith Bank, Oraimo, Johnnie Walker Blonde, the Lagos State Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Swoop, among other partners.
“Nobody builds a night like this alone. To Zenith Bank, Oraimo, Johnnie Walker Blonde, the Lagos State Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Swoop, thank you for backing an idea nobody had tried before. And to Nora Awolowo and the Black Market team, thank you for giving us a film worth gathering for.”
Nora Awolowo produced the film. Osikoya built the event that let 51,000 people actually experience it.
“This wasn’t a movie premiere with a crowd. This was a live, unrepeatable event with 51,000 moving parts, and it had exactly one chance to work.”
She also runs Voyage Quest Travels. Remember the name.