Chris Ellis appointment
Heading up IGN's operations outside the US.
IGN Entertainment, one of the strongest and most trusted brands in the world of online gaming and entertainment, today announced the appointment of Chris Ellis as Senior Vice President & Managing Director, International.
In this newly established role, Ellis will be responsible for all non-US operations across IGN Entertainment including, IGN.com the Web’s leading video game and entertainment information destination, Rotten Tomatoes the ultimate online movie destination, AskMen the Internet's top men's lifestyle site and other IGN Entertainment sites.
Prior to this move, Ellis developed market leading commercial operations for MySpace across Europe, helping to establish sales, operations and business development teams in core European territories. Now Ellis is tasked with strengthening the International IGN Entertainment business and increasing the industry profile outside of the US. He will report to Roy Bahat, General Manager, IGN Entertainment, based in Brisbane,US.
The last 12 months have seen significant success for IGN Entertainment internationally; IGN.com, Rotten Tomatoes and Ask Men have all achieved leading market position in their genres. According to IPSOS & IGN research the gaming sector in particular continues to grow and attract new audiences with 71% of the US population now playing video games*, and the International video games market set to grow to $34 Billion by 2011** .
“I’m excited about building on these accomplishments, there’s a job to be done ensuring that our breadth and reach outside of the United States is recognised in the industry”, said Ellis “I’m here to make sure that our achievements in terms of user numbers and quality local content are mirrored in our commercial success.”
Prior to joining Fox Interactive Media, Ellis was Senior Vice President, Business Development Group at AOL Europe, overseeing AOL’s Audience and Digital Services growth strategy. He was instrumental in the sale of AOL’s access business in 2006, and also negotiated a number the company’s high profile partnerships including Google and Live8.
IPSOS and IGN “Are you game?” research 2008 ** PWC Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2007-11About IGN Entertainment:
IGN Entertainment, a unit of Fox Interactive Media, Inc., is a leading Internet media and services provider focused on the videogame and entertainment enthusiast markets. Collectively, IGN's properties reached more than 35 million unique users worldwide in the month of February 2009, according to Internet audience measurement firm comScore Media Metrix. IGN's network of videogame-related properties (IGN.com, GameSpy, FilePlanet, TeamXbox, Direct2Drive and others), is one of the Web's leading videogame information destinations and attracts one of the largest concentrated audiences of young males on the Internet. IGN also owns and operates the popular movie-related website, Rotten Tomatoes and one of the leading male lifestyle Websites, AskMen.com. In addition, IGN provides technology for online game play in videogames. IGN is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, with offices throughout the U.S. and in Montreal.
For more information contact:
Mark Ward
Bastion Ltd.
mark@bastion.co.uk
+44 (0) 20 7421 7600
Allan Blair
Fox Interactive Media
Allan.blair@fox.com
+44 7901 890605