Long before Tix came into existence, its founders Folayemi Agusto and Nosakhare Oyegun were building EatDrinkFestival into one of Lagos’ most anticipated annual food and drink events. The founders have successfully run the food festival for the past decade, steering it from a boutique pop-up event in Ikoyi to the country’s largest annual culinary festival. As the festival grew, so did the challenges of managing attendee details, payments and ticketing. Those frustrations ultimately inspired the creation of Tix, a self-service ticketing solution built to make organising events and selling tickets online effortless.

Six years and more than two million event attendees later, Tix has found itself in a unique position to observe Nigeria’s commercial event economy from the inside. Every event discovered, ticket purchased, and attendee checked in contributes to a broader picture of how Nigerians engage with live experiences.

“Tix sees the commercial event economy from the inside. We see the categories gaining traction, the months where pricing power peaks, the locations where events cluster, and the ways economic pressure changes but does not erase demand for experiences.” — Folayemi Agusto, CEO and Co-founder of Tix

That unique vantage point now forms the foundation of the Tix Index 2026–the first of its kind–which draws on three years of proprietary data from 2023 to 2025 to map the evolution of Nigeria’s experience economy. Across six chapters, the report examines the market, economics, people, infrastructure and opportunities shaping the country’s events industry.

The findings of this Index offers a fascinating picture of how Nigerians are choosing to spend their time and money. While music and performances stood out as the industry’s biggest category, expanding by 105% between 2023 and 2025, the diversity of ticket sales across other categories like arts and culture and food and drinks, both of which also grew by 148% and 320% respectively, paints a clear picture: Nigerian event-goers are actively investing in experiences that foster connection, creativity, personal development alongside entertainment. 

According to Agusto, most of the conversations online are about key moments or reactions to specific events. What has been missing is a complete picture of the market itself. Who is showing up? What experiences are they willing to pay for? How has their behaviour changed? Where is activity growing?”. 

These are the questions the index aims to comprehensively answer and to bring these insights to a wider audience, The NATIVE is collaborating with Tix to turn the data from the Tix  Index into a series of feature stories that contextualise and explore the places, trends, and cultural forces shaping Nigeria’s event economy.