After almost five years at the helm of leading Swiss film rights and content trading enterprise Cinetrade, CEO Wilfried Heinzelmann has decided to step down from operational management as of July 2019. His successor in the role of CEO will be Wolfgang Elsässer. Elsässer is currently Head of TV & Entertainment at Deutsche Telekom in Bonn.
“Wolfgang Elsässer is a proven content and TV expert whom we are very fortunate to be bringing on board,” says Swisscom CEO and Chairman of the Cinetrade Board of Directors, Urs Schaeppi. Mr Schaeppi is confident that Wolfgang Elsässer will continue the excellent work that Wilfried Heinzelmann has started and provide an exciting new impetus for Cinetrade’s business. Cinetrade has developed strongly in recent years. Despite intense competition, the number of subscriptions has increased both for fictional entertainment and sports offerings. The portfolio has been reorganised and new services such as Teleclub Now have been launched successfully. In the cinema business, innovative leisure venues such as the one in Gümligen near Bern have really raised the bar.
Urs Schaeppi: “This success is very much attributable to Wilfried Heinzelmann and I am very grateful for his valuable contribution. It is a tribute to his integrity and respect for the company that he expressed his intention to leave at an early stage and thus made a smooth transition possible. I wish him all the very best for the future.”
Wilfried Heinzelmann will continue to be available to Cinetrade in an advisory capacity. He explains: “After more than 20 years in a management role at Cinetrade and almost 5 years as CEO, I now wish to set other priorities in my career. I would also like to spend more time with my family and on my hobbies.”
Speaking about his new role, Wolfgang Elsässer said, “I am very much looking forward to shaping the further growth of the entertainment business together with the Swisscom and Cinetrade teams. It’s an exciting entrepreneurial challenge.”
Following various management roles at Grundig, Premiere (now Sky) and SES Astra, Wolfgang Elsässer took over as Head of TV & Entertainment at Deutsche Telekom in 2016. Here, he headed up the entire value chain, incorporating development, operation, product management, the content areas of Fiction, Sports, VR and Music, communication, distribution and marketing of all Deutsche Telekom’s entertainment products.
In this role, Wolfgang Elsässer made an important contribution towards the further development of Deutsche Telekom’s entertainment products, business models and content offerings. He was responsible for opening up Telekom’s offering to also include third-party content from providers such as Netflix or Amazon, for example, and improving its offering for OTT customers. He strengthened Telekom’s services through new partnerships, exclusive content, co-productions and in-house productions, as well as an innovative free-on-demand offering, Megathek.
Summing up, Urs Schaeppi said: “Swisscom TV and Cinetrade’s offering are crucial for our positioning in the mass market. In an increasingly competitive environment, it is important to bring entertainment innovation that is relevant to the customer. I am certain that Wolfgang Elsässer is the right man for the job.”
