JEM Media Ventures

Who We Are

William van Rest

Founder & Managing Director

Will has over 25 years’ experience generating ancillary income streams for TV broadcasters, global production companies, talent and entertainment brands both in the UK and across international markets.

Most recently, he was Director of Games, Live & Merchandising at ITV Studios Global Entertainment, the content production division of ITV plc, but had previously held various senior level commercial director roles in the UK Broadcast (now M&E) division at ITV. He also had periods as the Managing Director of itv.com and as the Editorial Director of ITV’s digital content studio – across all genres including news, sport, entertainment, daytime and factual.

At ITV, Will had a particular focus on brand extensions into games, gaming, TV & DTC commerce, tours & live events, visitor attractions and digital content. His successes include

  • commercialising Love Island ancillary rights (over 1 million personalised water bottles sold with our DTC shop, over 20 million downloads and $50m of game revenue for the mobile game, setting up the digital playbook in 2017 for the show’s award-winning strategy including a show app, a chart topping daily podcast, YouTube channel and social accounts, and global brand partnerships including Quay Australia, Revolution Beauty, Tinder and Rewired Clothing).
  • building a portfolio of over 30 games (paid mobile, in app, web, metaverse) and gaming (bingo, slots, casino, lottery) products for brands including Hells Kitchen, The Chase, Tipping Point, The Cube, I’m A Celebrity, The Voice, 5 Gold Rings.
  • welcoming over 1 million visitors to ITV’s production sets including Coronation Street and Emmerdale.
  • selling over 600K tickets to live arena tours, theatre shows, musicals and live events including Ant & Dec’s Takeaway On Tour, The Big Reunion, James Martin, Dancing On Ice, Gino’s Italian Escape, Brainiac, Cilla The Musical and This Morning Live
  • creating a leisure network of 17 Ninja Warrior Adventure Parks around the UK with over 3 million visitors to date.
  • partnering in the UK to launch the number one music brand for kids KidzBop outside the US for the first time. Achieved over 10 top ten albums and will tour UK in 2024.
  • achieving 20x views and 50x revenue growth when leading ITV’s UK YouTube channels for 5 years.
  • establishing a post midnight commercial teleshopping window on ITV1 for 3 hours daily and overseeing the partners including TV shopping, play along games and interactive dating.

Prior to this, he was co-founder of The Optimistic Network which, through its channel Nation 277, was a feeder network of innovative programming ideas and funding models to larger broadcasters. Commissions were secured with GameShow Network, MTV, Channel 4 and ITV including the Richard Bacon hosted Flipside TV. Before that he was Head of Enhanced TV at BSkyB, leading red button opportunities across the various Sky channels, and creating the business case for the Sky Vegas TV channel. He has also worked at Fremantle Media (RTL Group) and its predecessor, Pearson Television, where amongst other things, he helped create an enterprises division and was VP Business Development, exploiting the ancillary rights of high profile brands such as Family Feud/Fortunes, Play Your Cards Right, The Price Is Right, Neighbours, The Bill, Baywatch and Pop Idol/Idols.

Will has an MBA from London Business School, is a Maths Graduate from Southampton University, and is a BAFTA and RTS member.