Team

Stéphane Courbit is an entertainment industry pioneer with a track-record of growing businesses and creating value for shareholders spanning almost 30 years. In 1994, he founded ASP/Case Production in partnership with TV producer and host Arthur. In 1998 he was appointed as the CEO of Endemol France after its merger with ASP Production. In 2006, he expanded into the online sports betting and gaming business as he founded LOV Group, which made an initial investment of €220 million in the Betclic Everest Group. In 2008, he founded the Banijay Group, with co-investments from Groupe Arnault, Exor, De Agostini and AMS Industries. In 2016, he acquired Zodiak Media through its merger with the Banijay Group and, in 2020, he led the acquisition of Endemol Shine. Stéphane is a graduate of ISG Paris and IUT Valence.

François Riahi began his career as an auditor in the French government’s Inspection Générale des Finances from 2001 to 2005, before joining the government’s Budget Department. In 2007, he was appointed Advisor on the Reform of State Institutions and Public Finances to the President of the French Republic. François spent eleven years of his career within the BPCE banking group where he held various positions. In particular, he is the former Chief Executive Officer of Natixis and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Coface. He joined Financière Lov in January 2021, becoming its Chief Executive Officer. François is a graduate of the École Centrale de Paris school of engineering, Sciences Po, the French National School of Administration and the Stanford Executive Program.

Sophie Kurinckx joined Banijay in 2010 as Head of Financial Control before taking up the role of Chief Financial Officer in 2012. Since joining, she has led on the group’s financial strategy and operations, and supported on mergers and acquisitions activity. Throughout her tenure, she has operated internationally across the organisation’s now 22-strong footprint, and 120+ production entities to drive best practice and collaboration.

Prior to Banijay, Sophie was at JCDecaux as Deputy Head of Group consolidation and Group IFRS specialist, having started in her career in 2000 as an auditor for KPMG.

Marco Bassetti has been CEO of Banijay since 2013. With a strong track-record in the international content business, his television career took off in the early 1980s as an executive producer for Mondadori’s Rete Quattro before moving to Mediaset. In 1986, he founded his own production company, La Italiana Produzioni, and a few years later, he set up Aran. Between 1994 and 1997, he was CEO of Pearson TV Italy and in December 1997, he started Endemol Italy, working as Managing Director and then President until 2004, when he stepped down to dedicate more time to entrepreneurial activities in Italy and abroad. He remained on Endemol’s International Board and, in 2007, he returned to the Group as COO. In 2009, Marco was appointed President before taking over the responsibility of Group CEO. Stepping down in 2012, he then opened Ambra Multimedia before, in 2013, taking on the role of CEO at Banijay.

Nicolas Béraud is the founder and CEO of Betclic. He started at Canal+ in 1996 to develop innovative projects in digital television. In 2000, he created Sport4fun.com, which quickly became the number one community in sports. In 2005, Nicolas founded Betclic in order to allow all sports fans to enhance their passion thanks to sports betting. In 2008, Betclic was acquired by Stéphane Courbit and continued to be managed by Nicolas until 2011 when he left the company to create TripleFun, a developer of mobile sports games. At the beginning of 2017, Nicholas was reappointed to lead and reinvent Betclic and he successfully established the company as a European leader in online sports betting and gaming.