Danny Fenton
CEO, ZigZag
Danny has been an industry leader for over 30 years and is known to be entrepreneurial and forward thinking, with a contact book second to none and known as the ultimate deal maker.
He has have worked in the international content market for 25 years and has been represented by all the leading agencies including WME, CAA and ICM. He won close to $100m+ of business in the US market alone and knows the heads of most of the key buyers in the US, UK and internationally personally. He prides himself in knowing buyers and sellers in places others haven't even heard of, for example - Insight TV, Rakuten, Fuse, Filmrise, Outdoor, TV Asahi, etc.
With forty plus active relationships in the US market including broadcasters, streamers and cable outlets, Danny has successfully sold and made shows for ABC, NBC, Fox, Fox Reality, A&E, Lifetime, GSN, Fuse, Filmrise, BBC America, CBS, Discovery, TLC, Travel, History, ID, MSNBC, Netflix, Amazon, Oxygen, Peacock, AMC, BYUTV, CNN, Food, Nat Geo, Outdoor, OUTtv, OWN, TBS, Weather, WETV, Syfy, Biography, MTV, VH1, CW, G4 Tech, E, Red Bull TV.
Overseeing an internal distribution business that included 1000 plus hours of library, Danny personally acquired third party finished shows and formats for exploitation. He successfully acquired formats from China, Korea and Japan and sold and produced them in the US and UK for NBC and BBC respectively. He also launched original formats in Japan, Korea, China, Israel, Ireland, Germany, Canada and South Africa. He has brokered hub productions in foreign territories and also overseen complicated co-productions with multiple territories involved, including overseeing back-to-back productions which switched out the host for the US version but kept the rest of the content the same.
He has successfully sold at and attended markets in Brazil, Mexico, Korea, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, Benelux, Scandanavia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Well known in all of these markets plus others, he sold a dating format to Korea that aired on CJE&M and shot a back-to-back English speaking version on the same set. Similarly in Japan with KTV for a physical studio game show. In China he sold an out of studio physical game show to 3C Media that was set up as an international hub. In Norway he set up a hub production for Disney for another physical out of studio challenge competition. In Israel he co-developed a dating format that he sold to a US network and held onto the distribution rights. He's overseen numerous Canadian co-productions tapping into the tax incentives.
He's recently overseen cinematic release of content, tapping into UK tax incentives. As stated he's worked on numerous Canadian co-productions that tap in to the 20-40% co-production treaty with the UK tax incentives. In Saudi Arabia he's been working on 50% local spend tax incentives and is now talking in Spain to The Canary Islands and Basque Country about tax incentives up to 60%. On the cinematic release side, he recently produced a feature documentary for Amazon for $1.3m for which Amazon paid $1m for UK licence only and the rest was then made up of tax incentives at 20% of the budget.
Danny has been responsible for co-founding and launching digital media channels including a sports channel in China called Show Mi, that is now reaching record audiences of 14m+ per film, per week. The channel is an omnichannel that is available on 10 different platforms in China. Also, a magic channel on YouTube called All Time Magic to discover up and coming talent in magic, and launched a 'male skewed' channel in association with Little Dot Studios called Toughest, which garnered 384,000 subscribers in little under three months after launch. He is also involved with a creator talent platform that Simon Cowell is a shareholder in called Lounges TV, which uses a pay-per-view (PPV) model and a tipping system to generate funds. Previously, he ran a 100 plus strong team including freelancers, with a management team of 10, that he oversaw and delegated to.
He is regularly invited to speak at industry conferences around the world and regularly contributes opinion pieces in the trade press. He was granted an 0-1 Visa as an 'individual with Extraordinary Ability' and had an office in New York and LA for 15 years. He has spent, on average, 50 days a year in the US for the last 20 years and has been making shows in the US for 25 years on both coasts and for cable, broadcast and OTT.
