Marco Bassetti

Marco Bassetti
Born	Near Lake Maggiore, northern Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Television executive, producer
Company	Banijay Entertainment
Title	Chief Executive Officer, Banijay Entertainment

Marco Bassetti is an Italian television executive and entrepreneur who has been chief executive officer of the production and distribution group Banijay since 2013. As of October 2026 he leads Banijay Entertainment, the company formed in July 2026 by the merger of Banijay's content and live entertainment business with the British producer All3Media, which describes itself as the world's largest independent production company.

Bassetti began in Italian commercial television in the early 1980s, working at the channel Antenna 3 and then as an executive producer for Mondadori's Rete Quattro before moving to Mediaset. He founded the production company La Italiana Produzioni in 1986 and Aran in 1989, and in 1997 he set up Endemol Italy, the Italian arm of the Dutch format company Endemol, which he ran as managing director and then president until May 2004. He returned to Endemol Group as chief operating officer in October 2007, became group president in August 2009 and, from June 2011, ran the company as joint interim chief executive alongside the chief financial officer Just Spee during a debt-for-equity restructuring. He left in April 2012.

After a short period running his own company, Ambra Multimedia, Bassetti became chief executive of Banijay, the French group founded by Stéphane Courbit, in 2013. He led it through the 2016 merger with Zodiak Media, the 2020 acquisition of Endemol Shine Group, the 2022 stock market listing of its parent company in Amsterdam and the 2026 combination with All3Media. Banijay's content and live business reported more than €3.3 billion in revenue for 2024 and 2025, and the company states that on a combined basis the merged Banijay Entertainment would have generated more than €4.3 billion in revenue in 2025.

Bassetti is also a member of the senior management team of the listed parent company, Banijay Group N.V., and holds shares in it through Prader SRL, a family-owned holding company. In October 2025 he received the Variety Vanguard Award at the MIPCOM television market in Cannes.

Early life and education

Bassetti was born near Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. He was studying economics at university when, in his words, he entered television "by coincidence, not by choice". A school friend found him a job at Antenna 3, a commercial channel in northern Italy and one of the first private television stations in Europe. He told Variety in 2025 that he took the job for the money at first, and that within a year he had "got to do every job" in television production: "I started as a studio assistant, then I did mixing and videos and then I was a director's assistant, then I directed, then I produced." Published sources do not say whether he completed his economics degree.

Career

Early television career

Bassetti learned television production in Milan. In the early 1980s he became an executive producer for Rete Quattro, the network then owned by the publisher Mondadori, and he stayed with the channel when it moved to Mediaset, the broadcasting group controlled by Silvio Berlusconi. According to Variety, his career advanced when Rete Quattro reached an agreement with the American network ABC. Bassetti was teamed with Steve Carlin, the American producer behind The $64,000 Question, to develop new entertainment formats. He recalled being told: "Just stay close to Steve Carlin. You speak English, you know how to create formats." He worked for Carlin as a producer for two or three years.

Bassetti said that Carlin gave him "a lot of intel" about the American television market, which he described as much larger than any European or Italian one. He also said that Carlin taught him the value of a strong producer behind a format. Carlin "came in with an American mentality" in which the executive producer was the boss, "whereas in Italy, the real boss is always the director, not the producer". The two worked together on the creation of M'ama non m'ama ("Love Me, Love Me Not"), which Bassetti described as the first dating show in Europe at the time. He also spent a period at the French channel La Cinq, which Berlusconi had co-founded.

La Italiana Produzioni and Aran

In 1986, at the age of 29, Bassetti founded his own company, La Italiana Produzioni. Variety described it as one of the first independent production companies in Italy, launched at a time when Italian channels made most of their programmes in-house. The company produced light entertainment and game shows. A few years later Bassetti set up a second company, Aran. According to the 2012 Endemol announcement of his departure, he founded Aran in 1989 and built it into a leading Italian production company.

The Dutch producer John de Mol entered the Italian market by taking a 5 percent stake in La Italiana Produzioni and Aran, according to Variety. From 1994 to 1997 Bassetti was also chief executive of Pearson TV Italy.

Endemol Italy, 1997 to 2004

Bassetti first joined Endemol in December 1997, when the group acquired Aran. That month he started Endemol Italy, and he worked there as managing director and then as president until May 2004. Variety reported that Bassetti and de Mol co-founded the Italian company and that, with producers including Stéphane Courbit, then head of Endemol France, it launched reality and game formats including Big Brother, Deal or No Deal and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the last of which it acquired for 13 territories.

Bassetti has described the negotiations needed to bring Big Brother to Italian television. "Nobody wanted to give us money for 'Big Brother' because people viewed it as very, very scandalous," he told Variety. He said the head of the channel, whom he described as very Catholic, asked him to meet a cardinal. "So I tried to explain to him that there was nothing too pornographic in 'Big Brother' ... and in the end the cardinal gave us his blessing!" Looking back on the period, he said that he and the producers he worked with "learned how to share creativity to protect formats", and that "we were the benchmark".

Bassetti stepped down in May 2004 to spend more time on business activities in Italy and abroad. He stayed on Endemol's international board.

Endemol Group, 2007 to 2012

Bassetti was appointed chief operating officer of Endemol Group in October 2007 and became group president in August 2009. Endemol had run into financial difficulties after going public in 2005 and carried a heavy debt load. From June 2011 Bassetti and the chief financial officer Just Spee ran the company together as joint interim chief executives.

Endemol said that during this period the business beat its budgeted EBITDA and grew revenue 10 percent year on year to nearly €1.4 billion in 2011. Scripted programming grew 34 percent that year. The group produced 189 formats, 56 of them new, and its distribution business added 1,000 hours of programming, bringing its catalogue to 24,000 hours. Endemol said that established formats such as The Money Drop and Big Brother aired in 87 countries in 2011. Lenders meanwhile negotiated a US$2.6 billion debt-for-equity restructuring that would give control of the company to Apollo Global Management and Cyrte Investments.

On April 5, 2012, two days after Mediaset announced that it had sold its stake in Endemol for US$94 million, the company said that Bassetti would step down after nearly 15 years with the group. Endemol announced that Spee would become chief executive after Bassetti left. Endemol's own announcement described Bassetti's role from 2011 as joint interim CEO, while later profiles describe him as having been president and chief executive of Endemol Group before he left.

Ambra Multimedia and a new chief executive role, 2012 to 2016

After leaving Endemol, Bassetti founded a new company, Ambra Multimedia, and in 2013 he became chief executive of Banijay. The group had been founded in 2007 by Stéphane Courbit, a former head of Endemol France, who has remained chairman of the business. By July 2015 its Italian business was called Ambra Banijay, and its other companies included a French production arm, H2O and Air Productions in France, Cuarzo and DLO Producciones in Spain, Brainpool in Germany, Nordisk Film TV in Scandinavia, Screentime in Australia and New Zealand, and Bunim/Murray Productions, the producer of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, in the United States.

On July 28, 2015, Bassetti's group and Zodiak Media, which was majority-owned by the Italian group De Agostini, agreed to merge. The combined company had revenue of about US$1 billion. The companies announced that Courbit would be chairman and Bassetti chief executive of the merged group. Deadline Hollywood noted that the deal would bring Bassetti back into the British market through Zodiak's UK businesses, which included RDF Television, IWC and Bwark.

Chief executive after the Zodiak merger, 2016 to 2020

The merger was completed on February 23, 2016. The new group was 73.8 percent controlled by a company owned by Courbit's LOV Group (50.1 percent) and De Agostini's DeA Communications (49.9 percent), with the French media group Vivendi holding 26.2 percent. Courbit became chairman and Bassetti chief executive. The group then operated in 17 territories, and its titles included Versailles, Temptation Island, Fort Boyard, Wife Swap and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Commenting on the completion, Bassetti said that the group had "strength in both its talent and assets to deliver a wide and diverse range of winning content across multiple platforms".

In the years after the merger, Bassetti built up the group's central team and expanded into new genres and territories. In September 2016 he hired Takis Candilis as head of scripted programming, calling drama "an important next step for the Group". In October 2016 he appointed Peter Langenberg as chief operating officer, responsible for the group's companies in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Germany and India. In April 2018 Bassetti launched an Asian division under Deepak Dhar, with India as its main focus, and set up a new German umbrella company under Marcus Wolter, formerly of Endemol Shine. Bassetti said the German company was meant to supply broadcasters and the growing number of streaming services in that market.

In July 2018 the group appointed Paolo Bassetti, previously chief executive and chairman of Endemol Shine Italy, as chief executive for Italy, with additional responsibility for Spain. The announcement said that Paolo Bassetti had been chief executive of La Italiana Production from 1995 and of Aran Production from 1996. Marco Bassetti said he was "looking forward to working with Paolo again". In October 2018 the group bought the French drama producer Terence Films to expand its scripted business in France. In October 2019 it formed a venture with the adventurer Bear Grylls and Delbert Shoopman. Bassetti said at the time that "in a crowded marketplace, with many new players, only strong talents can cut through".

Acquisition of Endemol Shine, 2019 to 2020

On October 25, 2019, Bassetti's group agreed to buy all of Endemol Shine Group, then co-owned by The Walt Disney Company and funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management. The deal covered Endemol Shine's 120 production labels, about 66,000 hours of programming and more than 4,300 registered formats. It was financed through a capital increase and new debt, which included refinancing the existing debt of both companies. After closing, the combined group was to be held by LDH (67.1 percent) and Vivendi (32.9 percent). LDH was controlled by Courbit's Financière LOV, with De Agostini and Fimalac as the other shareholders. Bassetti said the deal would "instantly strengthen our position in the global market". Variety has reported the price as US$2.2 billion.

The deal closed on July 3, 2020. The enlarged group then had about 200 entities in 22 countries, a catalogue of more than 88,000 hours and combined pro forma revenue of about €2.7 billion for 2019. Bassetti became chief executive of the combined group, and Sophie Turner Laing stepped down as chief executive of Endemol Shine Group. Three days later the company introduced a new brand identity under the single name "Banijay". Bassetti said that the acquisition "marks a major gear shift for our business and that had to be represented in our branding".

Bassetti spent the second half of 2020 on integration. He named new country heads, including Peter Lubbers in the Benelux region, and appointed Cris Abrego, formerly head of Endemol Shine North America, to oversee North and Latin America, reporting to Bassetti. Sophie Kurinckx, who had been with the group for more than a decade, was confirmed as group chief financial officer. Bassetti credited her as "a key driver in our refinancing efforts pre the recent acquisition". In December 2020 Langenberg, who had led the integration "in partnership with" Bassetti, was named chief operating officer of the enlarged group. Bassetti said the appointment marked "the completion of building an incredibly talented central leadership team".

The group's filings note that in 2020, the year of the acquisition, Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, the producers and writers of Black Mirror, left the company.

Listing and diversification, 2021 to 2025

In 2021 and 2022 Bassetti continued to buy and launch companies. The group bought the Italian children's producer Monello Productions in April 2021. In December 2021 it hired Patrick Holland as executive chairman of its UK business, and in 2022 it agreed to buy Sony Pictures Television's German business and announced a proposed acquisition of the Australian company Beyond International. In the Beyond announcement Bassetti said that "as content demand continues to soar, catalogue remains key".

On July 1, 2022, the group's parent company, FL Entertainment, merged with Pegasus Entrepreneurs, a special-purpose acquisition company, and was listed on Euronext Amsterdam. FL Entertainment also owned the online betting business Betclic. On June 30, 2022, Bassetti decided to contribute the Banijay Group shares he held through his holding company to FL Entertainment in exchange for ordinary shares. This ended an earlier shareholders' agreement that had given him a put option over his stake. The listed company was later renamed Banijay Group N.V. Bassetti sits on its senior management team alongside the executive directors and attends board meetings as a permanent guest without voting rights.

From 2023 Bassetti moved the group into areas next to its core production business. In June 2023 Bassetti agreed a deal for a majority stake in Balich Wonder Studio, a Milan-based producer of Olympic and other ceremonies, which had revenue of €315 million in 2022. Bassetti said the deal would create "a one-stop-shop for creativity". That month FL Entertainment created a separate live events business, Banijay Events. By 2025 Bassetti's title was chief executive of Banijay Entertainment and Banijay Live. In a keynote at Content London in November 2023, Bassetti announced a new sports division, covering sports entertainment, documentaries and digital content that would not bid for broadcast rights. He said that a central division would give the group "further capacity to deliver on partnerships, carve greater volume, mobilise digital opportunities".

Also in 2023, the group took minority stakes in companies including Hyphenate Media Group, the venture launched by Cris Abrego and Eva Longoria, and bought the UK scripted producer The Forge. Bassetti said the group made 14 acquisitions and investments that year. In late 2023 Bassetti's company made an offer for All3Media, which Warner Bros. Discovery and Liberty Global had put up for sale. Variety reported that Reuters described the offer as binding. All3Media was eventually bought in May 2024 by RedBird IMI, a joint venture led by Jeff Zucker and backed by RedBird Capital Partners and the Abu Dhabi-based IMI. Variety later reported that Bassetti's group had looked at the company but held back from bidding at that stage.

In 2024 the group bought Caryn Mandabach Productions, the company behind Peaky Blinders, and the French animation producer Procidis. At a SXSW London panel in June 2025, Bassetti was asked directly whether Banijay was buying ITV Studios. He answered only "No, well" and declined to comment further, while arguing that "consolidation scale is really important" in the industry. In an October 2025 interview he said that "the M&A market is not a priority for us today".

Merger with All3Media, 2026

On March 3, 2026, Banijay Group and RedBird IMI agreed to merge Banijay Entertainment, including Banijay Live, with All3Media. Each would own 50 percent of the new company, and Banijay Group would continue to consolidate its earnings. Bassetti was named chief executive of the combined group, All3Media's chief executive Jane Turton deputy chief executive, and Zucker chairman. The terms gave Banijay Group a total cash upstream of €796 million: a €625 million payment from RedBird IMI and a €171 million pre-closing dividend from Banijay Entertainment. The companies expected about €50 million of cost synergies. Variety reported an enterprise value of about US$8 billion for the combined company.

Zucker later said that Bassetti phoned him about a possible merger only eight days after RedBird IMI bought All3Media, and that Courbit followed up with a visit to New York. The talks were then put on hold while Zucker pursued a bid for ITV Studios that came to nothing. Asked why his company had not bought All3Media in 2024, Bassetti said: "Jeff was smarter than us, and he made the deal. If you look back two years ago, the market was different, and it changed very rapidly."

The merger closed on July 9, 2026. The combined Banijay Entertainment has its headquarters in London, where All3Media was based, operates in 25 territories and retired the All3Media brand. Bassetti said the company had long debated moving from Paris to London because "London is the European capital of this business", and that after the merger the UK would be its largest country. He said he would commute from Paris. He also said the cost savings would come mainly from property and support functions, not from the group's roughly 170 creative and production companies.

In October 2026 Bassetti announced the merged group's executive team. Apart from Turton, all of its members came from his side of the merger, and they all report to him. Regional heads reporting to Bassetti include Holland, confirmed in August 2026 as executive chairman and chief executive of the combined UK business of about 40 labels, and Laurens Drillich, appointed head of a new Latin American division in October 2026. In July 2026 Variety, citing Reuters, reported that the group was weighing a bid for Lionsgate Studios, although any approach might wait until the All3Media integration was further along. Neither Bassetti nor Zucker addressed the reports when asked in October 2026.

At MIPCOM in October 2026, Bassetti said the group was considering expanding into American scripted production: "Let's see what the future holds in the U.S. as well, because we have never touched this business. We saw some of our competitors go there, not really succeed, and then go back."

Leadership and management style

In 2025 Variety wrote that Bassetti "would rather discuss profit margins and business than accolades" and described him as "an iron fist in a velvet glove". He told the magazine that the company was "much more keen to give you a very good bottom line than to win an Oscar or a Golden Lion in Venice". Jane Turton, who ran All3Media before joining him as deputy chief executive, described him as "a fierce and competitive rival and a hugely respected friend" who is "passionate about television, unbelievably knowledgeable and irritatingly successful". The producer Tarak Ben Ammar called him "a great manager whom people trust" who "reassures the banks" and "speaks many languages".

Bassetti has repeatedly argued that producers need to own their intellectual property and that scale gives them the leverage to do so. Explaining the Endemol Shine deal, he said: "We strongly believe that if you want to survive in this market, you should have a very strong footprint. You should have a lot of strong IP in order, let's say, just to be very frank with you, not to be screwed by your client and to have leverage." At Rome's MIA market in October 2026, he called on European producers to push American studios and streamers for better terms of trade. He said that "the current battle [in Brussels] over [investment] quotas is instead entirely pointless" and that "the real fight should focus on studios and streamers recognizing and providing rewards for creativity", meaning producers keeping the rights to their programmes. Banijay's chief business officer, Frédéric Balmary, said after the same event that Bassetti had stated the group had invested €1 billion in creativity over the previous four years.

Bassetti has run the group on a decentralised basis, with chief executives leading each country. Under the 2026 merger terms the business continues to operate with what it calls a "de-centralized country CEO-driven model". When announcing mergers he has said that cost savings should not come from creative operations. In 2026 he said: "We don't want to do synergy in the creative side. We want to create synergy where there is a duplication and in other kinds of cost," and pointed to the Endemol Shine integration as the model. Earlier, announcing a deal in Germany in 2022, he said: "Talent, talent, talent, our priority, and at the core of our group."

He has described the group's moves into the creator economy as experiments. In October 2025 he said it had commissioned 10 pilots from creators in France and the UK using dormant formats from its catalogue, which he called a "test". He warned that "a clear business model, to be very honest, is not yet there. The only one that has made a lot of money is the creator." On artificial intelligence, he told the SXSW London audience that he was "a little bit scared" about misuse, saying he had seen an AI-generated video of himself dancing.

Major deals and strategic decisions

The main transactions of Bassetti's career, as reported by the companies and the trade press, are:

• Aran and Endemol Italy (1997): Endemol acquired Aran in December 1997, and Bassetti started Endemol Italy.
• Endemol restructuring (2011 to 2012): As joint interim chief executive, Bassetti oversaw the period in which lenders agreed a US$2.6 billion debt-for-equity restructuring.
• Zodiak Media (2015 to 2016): The merger was agreed on July 28, 2015, and completed on February 23, 2016. It created a group with revenue of about US$1 billion.
• Endemol Shine Group (2019 to 2020): The deal was agreed on October 25, 2019, and closed on July 3, 2020. Variety put the price at US$2.2 billion, and combined pro forma revenue for 2019 was about €2.7 billion.
• Listing (2022): FL Entertainment, the parent company, listed in Amsterdam on July 1, 2022, through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company.
• Balich Wonder Studio (2023): A majority stake was agreed in June 2023. The company had revenue of €315 million in 2022.
• Caryn Mandabach Productions (2024): The group bought the producer of Peaky Blinders.
• All3Media (2026): The merger was agreed on March 3, 2026, and completed on July 9, 2026, with a reported enterprise value of about US$8 billion.

Financial and market performance

When Bassetti became chief executive of the merged group in 2016, it had revenue of about US$1 billion. After the Endemol Shine acquisition, combined pro forma revenue for 2019 was about €2.7 billion. The group reported revenue of €3.2 billion and EBITDA of €472 million for 2022. For 2023 Bassetti reported revenue up 6 percent to €3.3 billion and adjusted EBITDA up about 7 percent at constant exchange rates to €494 million, a margin of 14.9 percent.

For 2024 Bassetti said that Banijay Entertainment, including Banijay Live, had passed €3.3 billion in revenue with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.8 percent, and that it had become "the largest European scripted studio". Variety noted that content production revenue alone fell 2.8 percent that year to €2.6 billion as streaming platforms cut spending. In the first half of 2025 Banijay Entertainment reported revenue of €1.42 billion, up 3 percent, and adjusted EBITDA of €208 million. Streamers accounted for 20 percent of production and distribution revenue, and live experiences brought in €173 million. The company states that the businesses Bassetti leads reached €3.3 billion in revenue and €544 million in EBITDA for 2025.

At the level of the listed parent, Banijay Group, which also includes sports betting and gaming, revenue rose 3.4 percent to €4.881 billion in 2025 and adjusted EBITDA rose 8.6 percent to €961 million. Commenting on those results, Bassetti said that "in a consolidating market, scale matters". On a combined basis, the merged Banijay Entertainment would have generated more than €4.3 billion in revenue and more than €0.7 billion in adjusted EBITDA in 2025.

The group's footprint under Bassetti grew from 17 territories at the 2016 merger to 22 after the Endemol Shine deal and 25 after the All3Media merger. Over the same period its catalogue grew from about 88,000 hours in 2020 to more than 265,000 hours in 2026.

Shareholding and remuneration

As of December 31, 2025, Bassetti indirectly held 6,916,269 ordinary shares of Banijay Group N.V. through Prader SRL, a family-owned holding company. These represented 1.2 percent of the share capital. At the end of 2022 the same holding represented 1.9 percent of FL Entertainment. On March 5, 2021, Banijay SAS issued share purchase warrants to Prader, exercisable in five instalments until December 31, 2025. These were exercised between January 2025 and March 2026. As part of the All3Media combination, Prader undertook to contribute its remaining 1,799,761 Banijay SAS shares to Banijay Group N.V. in exchange for 4,971,984 Banijay Group shares. The company reports the remuneration of its senior management members only as an aggregate figure, which in 2025 also covered the head of its betting business.

Board memberships and outside roles

As of December 31, 2025, Bassetti was a member of the board of GEDI Gruppo Editoriale S.p.A. The 2022 filing listed earlier directorships, since resigned, at Camas Energy srl and at Green Arrow Capital Asset Management 1 srl and Green Arrow Capital Asset Management 2 srl. He remained on Endemol's international board after leaving Endemol Italy in 2004. He is a member of the senior management team of Banijay Group N.V. and attends its board meetings as a permanent guest without voting rights.

Personal life

Bassetti divides his time between Paris and Rome. He said in July 2026 that he would commute from Paris to Banijay Entertainment's new London headquarters. His shares in the listed company are held through Prader SRL, which the company's filings describe as an Italian family holding company.

Recognition

• 2025: Variety Vanguard Award, presented by Variety and MIPCOM at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes on the first day of MIPCOM, October 13, 2025. Announcing the award, Variety co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton said that "under Marco Bassetti's leadership the company has delivered strong results and ambitious slates".

See also

• Banijay
• Endemol
• Endemol Shine Group
• All3Media
• Stéphane Courbit
• Jeff Zucker
• John de Mol

External links

• Banijay Entertainment official website
• Banijay Entertainment leadership biography