TORONTO—As part of its ongoing global expansion, Quickplay has announced the establishment of a new office in Europe and the naming of Wim Ponnet, a veteran of the media, sports and technology sectors, as president, EMEA.
The new office was set up to capitalize on growing demand for cloud-native, open architecture OTT solutions. With the new office, Quickplay said it will work to use its expertise and its global talent and innovation capabilities to offer fast, flexible, and scalable solutions for pay-TV, telco and MVPD customers throughout the EMEA region.
"Our success with sports, media and entertainment providers across North America and APAC has spurred enormous interest in our ability to drive results for the streaming industry," said Paul Pastor, chief business officer and co-founder of Quickplay. "Wim Ponnet's skillset and track record in EMEA will spearhead a dedicated presence that will help us immediately to address a growing pipeline of inquiries from providers – all of whom are seeking the superior performance and rapid integration of AI technologies that only cloud-native, open architecture solutions can provide."
As chief strategy and commercial officer of Endemol Shine Group, Ponnet was responsible for P&L management of the company's sales organization, achieving multiple consecutive years of annual growth in excess of 20%. Previously, with Yahoo!, he had been senior director, strategy and operations, EMEA and chief of staff. He most recently served as founding partner and CEO of FanTechCapital, an investment firm at the intersection of sports, media and technology. He also serves on multiple investor and advisory boards for sports, academic and business organizations.
"Every distributor and sports league I've worked with has articulated the need for platforms that go beyond delivery of content and instead can truly drive viewer engagement," said Ponnet. "Quickplay's cloud native, open architected platform is opening the door to rich fan and consumer experiences that can meet the OTT and sports industries' strategic objectives today and can harness the business and market potential of Generative AI tomorrow."
