Acun Ilıcalı

Acun Ilıcalı — Biography

Competition and reality formats owe much of their popularity in Turkey to Acun Ilıcalı, a Turkish producer, presenter and media owner. He founded Acun Medya and owns the channels TV8 and TV8.5 and the Exxen platform. Chairman of the English club Hull City since 2022, he saw the team beat Middlesbrough 1-0 at Wembley on 23 May 2026 to win promotion to the Premier League.

Born in Edirne, Ilıcalı attended Kadıköy Anadolu High School and left Istanbul University's English teaching programme before finishing. After a denim-shop venture failed, he turned to sports reporting at Show TV, then became a familiar face through his Televole segment and Acun Firarda, a travel show for which he visited more than 100 countries. With Acun Medya, founded in 2004, he adapted licensed formats such as Fear Factor, Var Mısın Yok Musun, Survivor, Yetenek Sizsiniz, O Ses Türkiye and MasterChef for Turkish viewers, and sat on the jury of Yetenek Sizsiniz Türkiye. He brought TV8 into the group in 2013 and launched the sports channel TV8.5 in 2016.

His international expansion began with productions in Greece and grew through Exatlon, a format merging sport and reality, which reached countries such as the United States, Mexico and Romania. He launched Exxen in 2021. In football he first took a stake in Fortuna Sittard in the Netherlands, then bought Hull City, and from June 2024 to June 2025 served as a vice-president of Fenerbahçe. Variety listed him among the 500 most influential media and entertainment business leaders from 2018 to 2021.