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In a surprise executive shuffle, Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra is stepping down from his CEO role, effective Jan. 2, 2025. SPE’s current Chairman of Global Television Studios and President and COO, Ravi Ahuja, will be taking the reigns as SPE President and CEO.
Ahuja will report to Sony Group Corporation Chairman and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida and Sony Group Corporation President, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki. Vinciquerra will stay on in an advisory role for SPE as non-executive Chairman until the end of December 2025.
The news comes in the wake of Sony Pictures Entertainment, along with Apollo, making a go to acquire Paramount Global last summer for $26 billion. Despite Sony losing Paramount to Skydance, that’s not the reason for Vinciquerra’s exit. Rather, I’m told, a succession plan has been in place for the last two-and-half-years. One indication of what was in store to come: Ahuja’s elevation to President and COO last March. During his time as Fox Networks Group CEO, Vinciquerra hired Ahuja in 2007 as CFO, the former a mentor to the latter. Vinciquerra brought Ahuja over to SPE three years ago with the intention that he would ultimately lead the company.
Vinciquerra praised Ahuja to Deadline today, saying, “He has very good EQ and IQ. He’s much smarter than I am. And much better with people than I am.”
Vinciquerra came out of retirement and arrived at Sony in June 2017 following the Culver City lot’s rattling from the North Korea hack. Vinciquerra made it his business to put the studio’s cards back in order; predominantly he kept Sony from turning itself into a streamer –maneuvers which have cost their motion picture studio competition dearly in billions of red ink investment– while also pivoting Sony Pictures Television away from broadcast into a streaming content supplier.
Or as Sony brass proudly coin the conglom: a content “arms dealer.”
It’s a strategy that proved strong through Covid as rivals fell prey to the temptations of streaming, and even throughout the dual strikes to the point where Vinciquerra shaped Sony from being a previously buzzed about acquisition target pre-Covid to the big kid on the playground with the potential to wrangle a major studio such as Paramount Global. Sony craved Paramount’s IP of Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, and Transformers, however, being a Japanese owned conglom, not to mention a non-M&A friendly presidential Joe Biden administration, were serious hurdles in any marriage between the Culver City and Melrose Ave. lots.
Consider the “arms dealer” business model, a tried and true for the future of Sony.
“There’s a long tail there,” Vinciquerra tells Deadline.
He expounds, “When we made the decision not to get into general entertainment streaming, we also made the decision to get into genre-based streaming which is where Funimation and Crunchyroll came from. But we knew that there’s no entertainment company in the world that can supply all the content needs necessary to compete either as a broadcast network 35 years ago or a streaming service today. They all need outside creative forces to help them to be on their game, to be competitive, to be sharp. I think this strategy will be fine as long as there are competitors in the streaming service.”
SPE’s yield under Vinciquerra includes five consecutive years of increasing profit powered by its feature slate, reimagined TV business and M&As in key growth areas, read the acquisition of anime content brand Crunchyroll in 2021. That anime label is bound to be one of Sony’s largest businesses in the next two years. The label is profitable in its 15M subs who pay as much as $9 apiece. Theatrical, with it’s a big grossing movie like Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero ($38.1M domestic) or a lower grossing movie like Spy x Family Code: White — is all gravy.
Other big feathers in Vinciquerra’s cap during his run include hammering the Netflix licensing deal for its feature films, reported to be worth a $1 billion. That deal replaced Sony’s long-running pay-one cable TV window with Starz. The terms included Netflix having an 18-month exclusive window for Sony films, as well as a first look for direct-to-streaming titles. It was another example of Vinciquerra’s prescience on the linear business, grey clouds which he spotted while running 400 networks at Fox.
Vinciquerra tells Deadline, “The most important decision was to get out of the linear TV network business. When I arrived here, we had 110 cable networks, and we got out of most of them and we don’t have that albatross around our neck like most of our competitors. Streaming will eventually become profitable, the linear channel business will not improve. It’s on a negative path.”
Divesting non-core businesses at Sony was also key during Vinciquerra’s run, i.e. selling its majority stake in the 2006 $65M price tag Crackle streaming service to Chicken Soup for the Soul, as well as unloading most of SPE’s international cable networks as that market began to wane. Crackle was bleeding $35M annually with a staff of 300 before Sony unloaded it to Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Of late, Sony Corp posted a 10% rise in operating profit for its most recent Q1, beating analyst estimates. Profit was $1.9B. The $582 billion-plus market cap conglom’s stock reached a 52 week high on Jan. 12. Sony Motion Picture Group hit a $1 billion at the 2023 box office, +20% from 2022.
“The extraordinary turnaround at SPE over the last 10 years would not have been possible without Tony’s deep experience and expertise in the entertainment space, his strategic vision and his outstanding leadership,” said Yoshida in a statement. “Under Tony’s watch, SPE became a critically important part of our efforts to maximize the value of our IP and find synergies across all our entertainment and technology businesses, and it remains a key driver in Sony Group’s ongoing corporate strategies to lean further into the creative and entertainment spaces. I want to thank Tony for his years of dedication and leadership at SPE, and for his invaluable support across the group companies during his successful career at Sony.”
Yoshida continued, “Since joining SPE in 2021, Ravi has been at the center of Tony’s leadership team, navigating the unprecedented challenges of today’s media and entertainment environment and positioning SPE for further growth. Ravi brings with him years of experience from his time at some of the world’s most successful entertainment companies, and we look forward to working more closely with him in his new role as President and CEO of SPE.”
“When I stepped into this role seven and a half years ago, I would’ve never imagined the extraordinary industry disruption and opportunity we’d face,” said Vinciquerra. “I’m filled with immense gratitude for this exceptional company and its profound legacy in Hollywood history. I’m consistently inspired by my brilliant and resolute colleagues. Together, against the odds, we achieved remarkable success and have consistently proven that this is a community built on passion and resilience. Thank you for making these past seven and half years the most gratifying of my career. My sincere appreciation goes to Kazuo Hirai for offering me this opportunity in 2017, and to Kenichiro Yoshida and Hiroki Totoki for their leadership and unwavering trust and support over the years. I have the utmost confidence that SPE will continue to thrive in the years ahead and know that Ravi is the right leader to take SPE forward.”
Ahuja arrived at SPE in 2021 to oversee all production businesses for Sony Pictures Television (SPT) and the studio’s India business as Chairman of Global Television Studios. SPT and its production companies produce several award-winning and acclaimed television series including The Crown, The Boys, Gen V, Cobra Kai, Better Call Saul, The Last of Us, Outlander, For All Mankind, The Night Agent, Twisted Metal, The Wheel of Time, S.W.A.T., The Good Doctor, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!, Shark Tank, American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, 90 Day Fiancé, Octonauts, SuperKitties, and many more.
Ahuja has also overseen SPE’s M&A activities, including the acquisitions of dine-in exhibitor Alamo Drafthouse, award-winning nonfiction entertainment company Industrial Media, leading UK production company Bad Wolf and VFX company, Pixomondo, as well as the sale of GSN Games to Scopely. Wall Street scratched their heads in June when it was announced Sony was taking Alamo in the midst of talks with Skydance. However, for Sony, it was a direct means to communicate with close to 5M moviegoers in the Alamo Drafthouse loyalty program.
Prior to SPE, Ahuja was President of Business Operations and CFO of Walt Disney Television. Before joining Fox Networks in 2007 as CFO, Ahuja spent eight years at Virgin Entertainment Group, Inc. in increasingly responsible executive roles, ultimately becoming CFO. Prior to joining Virgin, he was in the consulting practice at McKinsey & Company and began his career in investment banking.
“It is my privilege and honor to take the helm at SPE,” said Ahuja. “This is a special place — an iconic studio with an extraordinary 100-year history of storytelling. Thanks to Tony’s remarkable leadership, we have leading businesses with clear strategies and are set up for even greater success in the years to come. I am energized by the opportunities ahead and am lucky to work alongside thousands of talented colleagues around the world at SPE and at our Sony sister companies. I am grateful for Tony’s mentorship, guidance and friendship through the decades, and I thank Yoshida-san and Totoki-san for entrusting me with this important role.”
Even though Sony didn’t scoop up Paramount, they’re not out of the M&A business.
Vinciquerra told us about the industry’s future “The next 18-24 months of our business is going to be pretty chaotic, but at the end of it with the buys and the sells, the companies that survive will be in very good shape. They will have dealt with the cable networks. At the end of that chaotic period, the only thing we’ll know is that the demand for entertainment isn’t going down, it will expand, it will increase. We’ll be stratified, more genre based. It will be a good business and the companies providing the entertainment will be on much stronger financial footing.”
