50 million for Dutch crossmedia-fund

Joop van den Ende, the other half of the famous Endemol enterprise is back in the mediagame. He has started up a crossmedia fund. Together with Hubert Deitmers (former board of directors Endemol) Van den Ende plans to bring his passion for media back into new companies that operate on the converging marketplace. Van den Ende has been active in the world of theater with his VandenEnde foundation after he left Endemol. His work has had a significant influence on the developments of the theater market in the Netherlands and as far as I know also in other places in Europe. He explained in an interview that he was making money in two ways, by exploiting the theater buildings and by selling tickets for the plays in these theaters. One of his last projects is building the new DeLaMar theaters in Amsterdam, by reconstructing this old theater in the center of Amsterdam for new glorious theater moments. Not all projects are highly profitable, also high culture productions are supported. Van den Ende was bound to a non-competition agreement with Telefonica untill 1 January of this year, after John de Mol and Van den Ende sold their company to the spanish 6 years ago. Both of them earned billions with the sale. The new fund (VandenEnde &Deitmers) aim at smaller but innovative enterprises. A return on investment of 20% per year is achievable in this field. That is very probably a good informed estimate and means good news for all of us operating in this field.
Another 100 million is reserved to help middlesize companies, such as Eyeworks grow (although I doubt if Eyeworks is still middlesized, they are a pretty large player by now). There has been a long term relation between VandenEnde and Oerlemans (Eyeworks) as Van den Ende was the first to recognize Oerlemans talents as more then a soappie. On the verge of the convergence in the mediamarket to seriously take up, both big mediaplayers are back in the game. And both de Mol and Van den Ende have been very succesfull in the broadcasting market, signaling a good view on the possibilities in the mediamarket. Since both are aiming at crossmedia developments, that is good news for the development of the crossmedia market in the Netherlands and Europe. The flip side may be that again the same people will be dominating the media market. In general it is good news for all crossmedia missionaries out there.