Driss Slaoui Is Building Welovebuzz Beyond a Single Media Brand
Welovebuzz began as a youth-media platform. Its latest move suggests Driss Slaoui is trying to build something broader: a Moroccan media company that can own several distinct audiences rather than relying on one flagship brand.
In September 2026, Welovebuzz took an undisclosed equity stake in 532, a Moroccan football-media company founded in 2021 by Adam Guennouni, Mohamed Mahsoun, Chadi Mouchtakir and Yassine Agourram. The founders remain shareholders and Guennouni stays on as CEO.
The transaction is relatively small in the context of global media M&A. Strategically, it says much more about where Welovebuzz wants to go.
From a youth-focused brand to a media portfolio
Slaoui founded Welovebuzz as a teenager in 2010. The company grew around an ability to understand young Moroccan internet culture and distribute formats that travelled through social platforms. Welovebuzz says its wider media portfolio now reaches more than 14 million followers and generates more than four billion video views a year across Welovebuzz, Welovebuzz News and xProjekt.
The 532 investment adds a vertical with a very different centre of gravity: football.
532 says it has more than two million social followers and generates more than 200 million views a month. It has worked with properties including the Botola Pro, LaLiga, Ligue 1 and the Eredivisie. For Welovebuzz, that means entering a category where audience passion, rights, brand partnerships and the build-up to the 2030 World Cup can all create new commercial opportunities.
More importantly, Welovebuzz is not absorbing 532 into its existing editorial identity. The founders remain in the business. Guennouni remains chief executive. The logic appears to be portfolio building: back a specialised media brand that already has its own voice and community, then use the larger group to help it add talent, formats and revenue.
That model is worth watching in African digital media.
Many independent media businesses grow around a charismatic founder, a single audience and one distribution identity. That can create strong brands, but it also creates concentration risk. Platform changes can hurt reach. Audience tastes move. Advertisers want different communities. A portfolio gives a media company more ways to reach audiences without forcing every interest through the same publication.
Slaoui’s own journey has already been shaped by platform change. Welovebuzz started as a web-native publication, moved heavily into social distribution and video, and built a commercial model around branded content and younger audiences. In a 2025 long-form interview, Slaoui discussed the economics of media, the move between formats and languages, platform dependence and the company’s ambitions beyond its first phase.
The 532 deal turns that evolution into a more concrete corporate strategy.
Turning football’s appeal into a sustainable business
Football is especially interesting because it is not simply another editorial category. In Morocco, the commercial opportunity sits around a dense system of clubs, leagues, players, sponsors, creators, merchandise and international attention. With the country preparing to co-host the 2030 World Cup alongside Spain and Portugal, the value of specialised football audiences is likely to attract more media and brand interest.
That does not guarantee the investment will work. Audience scale does not automatically translate into sustainable media revenue, and the transaction value and Welovebuzz’s exact stake have not been disclosed. The harder work will be converting attention into repeatable commercial products without weakening the editorial identity that made 532 valuable.
But the direction is significant.
Slaoui is no longer only building Welovebuzz as a media brand. He is beginning to build Welovebuzz as a media group.
For African digital-media founders, that creates a useful question: once a publication has learned how to build audience and distribution, is the next stage simply to make the original brand bigger or to use that capability to build and back a portfolio of specialised media businesses?
The answer may define the next phase of independent African media
Sources :
Médias24, « Welovebuzz entre au capital du média 532, spécialisé dans le football »
Welovebuzz, « Voici comment Welovebuzz a été créé depuis une chambre d’université »
Next Wave, « #25 Driss Slaoui (Welovebuzz) : créer le média #1 des jeunes »
