Trace, Africa’s Biggest Afro-Urban Media Group, Went From a Swedish Broadcaster to US Private Equity for €30m

TPG Growth completed its purchase of a 75% stake in Trace Partners SAS on 15 May 2018, paying €30 million in cash to Sweden’s Modern Times Group (MTG) for control of Africa’s largest Afro-urban music and media network. TPG did not buy the company alone: Evolution Media and Satya Capital co-invested in the deal, valuing the whole of Trace at €40 million. The remaining 25% stayed exactly where it had sat since Trace’s founding in 2003, with co-founder Olivier Laouchez and Trace’s management team.

It is a corporate ownership story, not a music-rights one. No masters, no publishing catalogue and no artist contract changed hands here. What changed was who controlled the parent company that owns Trace’s African television channels, digital platforms, radio stations and talent-development arm, and that company had already changed hands once before, four years earlier, in the opposite direction: from an independent French media group into a Scandinavian broadcaster’s balance sheet.

What the documents establish

MTG’s own 26 June 2014 press release confirms where this starts: the Nasdaq Stockholm-listed broadcaster acquired 75% of Trace Partners SAS following approval from French media regulators, consolidating the company into its Pay-TV Emerging Markets segment from 1 July 2014. MTG’s release describes Trace as “a global youth media brand and pay-TV channel operator with distribution agreements in 160 countries worldwide,” including all 55 African nations. Laouchez stayed on as Chairman and CEO, and Trace’s management retained the other 25%, a structure that did not change for the rest of the decade.

Just under four years later, MTG went looking for an exit. TPG’s own 19 January 2018 press release, announcing a definitive agreement rather than a completed sale, names TPG Growth as the lead acquirer alongside Evolution Media and Satya Capital, describes Trace as reaching “200 million viewers and listeners across 160 countries” through “30 digital and mobile services, 21 pay TV channels and seven FM radio stations,” and quotes both Laouchez and Yemi Lalude, TPG Africa’s Managing Partner, on the deal. What TPG’s release does not state is the price. That figure comes from trade press coverage of MTG’s own announcement the same day: a €40 million enterprise valuation for 100% of the business, with TPG’s consortium buying the 75% MTG held. Willkie Farr & Gallagher’s own announcement confirms it advised Trace, Laouchez and Trace’s management on the sale side.

The agreement closed four months later. A MarketScreener record of the 15 May 2018 completion, sourced to S&P Capital IQ, puts the final cash consideration at €30 million and states MTG booked a preliminary net capital gain of roughly SEK 58 million on the sale. Trade coverage of the same announcement reported that the sale followed MTG’s disposal of its Czech television assets for €116 million and its Baltic broadcasting business for €100 million the previous year, part of a broader retreat toward its core Scandinavian broadcasting operations and away from emerging-market pay-TV, of which Trace was the last major piece.

Why a Swedish broadcaster owned Africa’s biggest music network in the first place

Trace was never a Nigerian, South African or Ivorian company by ownership, even though its channels and Trace Academia training platform are built around African audiences and African talent, and even though it has run regional operations across the continent since well before 2014. It was founded in Clichy, outside Paris, and its parent has been a French holding company controlled first by its founders and early investors including Goldman Sachs’s Urban Investment Group, then by Trace’s own management after a 2010 buyout, then by a Swedish broadcaster from 2014, and then by an American private equity consortium from 2018. Africa was always the market Trace served, never the jurisdiction where control of the company sat. That gap between where a media brand’s audience is and where its equity is held is the specific thing this record is built to make legible.

What actually changed hands, and what didn’t

What TPG Growth, Evolution Media and Satya Capital bought is equity control of Trace Partners SAS: the entity that owns the Trace Africa channel family, Trace Urban, the FM radio stations and the Trace Academia platform. Nothing in TPG’s release, MTG’s release, or the trade and legal coverage of either transaction states that any music masters or publishing rights administered or licensed through Trace changed ownership as part of this sale. Trace is a broadcaster, platform operator and talent-development company, not primarily a rights holder in the way a label or publisher is, and this deal reads accordingly: a change of controlling shareholder at the parent level, with Laouchez’s operational leadership and Trace management’s 25% stake continuous across both the MTG and TPG ownership periods.

Also worth being precise about: no source establishes how the 75% TPG’s consortium bought was split between TPG Growth, Evolution Media and Satya Capital individually, only that the three acquired it together. And no document reviewed for this record establishes what has happened to that stake since completion in May 2018. TPG’s own site and third-party portfolio trackers still associate Trace with TPG, but Afrobeats Wire found no primary document confirming current, 2026 ownership, and this record makes no claim about it.

What this means for artists

For an artist who has appeared on a Trace channel, been part of a Trace-backed talent search, or come up through Trace Academia, this deal did not touch your masters, your publishing or your existing contracts with your own label or publisher. What it changed is who ultimately controls the platform that programmes, promotes and distributes your video and audio content across Trace’s African footprint, and what that platform’s commercial priorities are. A private equity consortium with an Africa-focused investment arm answers to a different set of return expectations than a Scandinavian broadcaster winding down its emerging-markets pay-TV business did, and that can show up in programming choices, regional investment and which markets Trace prioritises for expansion, even though it changes nothing about who owns any individual song or recording that Trace plays.

The broader lesson is one this desk keeps returning to: a platform’s ownership and the rights of the artists who appear on it are two separate ledgers. Knowing who controls Trace Partners SAS tells an artist nothing about who owns their masters or publishing, and knowing your own rights position tells you nothing about who is deciding Trace’s next move. Both are worth tracking, but they are not the same question, and conflating them is exactly the kind of error a deal record like this one exists to prevent.

Afrobeats Wire could not establish Trace Partners SAS’s ownership structure after the 15 May 2018 completion of this deal, including whether TPG Growth, Evolution Media and Satya Capital still hold the 75% stake as of 2026 or how that stake was split between the three. No source reviewed for this record discloses any transfer of music masters, publishing rights or artist contracts as part of either the 2014 MTG acquisition or the 2018 TPG-led buyout. Trace, TPG Growth, Modern Times Group, Evolution Media and Satya Capital are all tracked in Afrobeats Wire’s company directory; several of these profile pages are still being built out.