Champion Breweries returns to ART X Lagos with Bullet brand and wider drinks lineup

Champion Breweries Plc is back at ART X Lagos for a second straight year, using the art fair to put its growing drinks lineup in front of a wider African audience.

The 11th edition of the fair opened in Lagos on 5 November and runs to 8 November under the theme "A New Chapter, A New Decade". Organisers say the theme looks at how the continent's cultural traditions keep feeding new art.

For Champion, the partnership is a chance to show it is more than a beer maker. The company is pushing into new drink categories and new markets, and the fair gives it a stage where art, music and everyday social life meet.

Bullet takes the music stage

The group's music night, ART X Live!, holds on Saturday, 7 November, with Bullet as the featured brand. The show is curated by Lanre Masha and will feature Kunmie, Lulu and Taves.

Champion also has a branded lounge at the fair on 6, 7 and 8 November, where visitors can try its products.

Eric Idiahi, Group CEO of Evercorp Industries and a director of Champion Breweries, said culture shows who people are and what they hope to become. He said businesses should back the creatives and platforms that keep those expressions alive and help new audiences find them.

The company said a key step in its expansion was buying the Bullet brand portfolio, which lifted its presence in ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages and energy drinks and took its commercial reach to 14 African markets.

Champion has been growing its top line. One of its recent results put revenue at ₦51.4bn, and the company has also named a new chief executive.

For ordinary Nigerians, the fair is one more sign that Lagos's arts scene is drawing serious corporate money, which means work for artists, curators, sound engineers and event staff. Whether that spending reaches beyond the big brands and into smaller creative businesses is the question many in the sector will be watching.

ART X Lagos closes on Sunday, 8 November.