Wesley Ellul has worn many hats in his career: actor, DJ, theatre producer, tech entrepreneur, blockchain evangelist, and now President and Head of Strategy at Technotainment. He laughs when I ask him about his beginnings. “I started my adult life as an actor and a DJ,” he says. “I was working at the National Theatre in Malta, in musicals and plays, and even ballet. I was the Rat King in The Nutcracker. Not bad for a DJ who thought ballet might help him meet girls.”
From those early creative days, Wesley learned an important lesson about entertainment. “I realised that as an actor, if I wasn’t working, I wasn’t getting paid. It wasn’t scalable.” So he turned to technology. In 2005, he founded Malta’s first online business directory, which taught him the mechanics of search and code. That evolved into a web development company that built over 500 projects for clients across Europe, from Avis and UEFA to airports and ferry services.
“I’ve always loved live entertainment,” he says. “So I built platforms for ticketing, recruitment, and events, using tech to enhance how we sold and engaged audiences.” But by 2016, he wanted something bigger. “I thought, why build for a small island when I can build for the world? The difference was capital.”
His answer came through blockchain. “I’d been reading about ICOs, and I thought, this could be the future.” His team built Quizando, a live interactive quiz platform where viewers didn’t just watch but played for real money. “It was a win, win, win model,” he explains. “Creators, players, and audiences all benefited.”
Then came the bear market, COVID, and the rise of play-to-earn. Wesley saw it all coming. “Back in 2018, I was saying games would drive adoption. People laughed. Then came 2021, and the biggest narrative of the bull run was GameFi.”
A serendipitous moment changed everything. At a conference in Austin, Texas, Wesley was introduced to Nyhl Henson, the visionary who had created Nickelodeon, MTV, Country Music Television, and the first pay-per-view systems. “He told me I was technotainment before technotainment was created,” Wesley recalls. “I said thank you, I think, but what is technotainment?”
Henson’s answer was the spark that lit their partnership. “He said it’s where viewers aren’t passive. They’re part of the show. They engage, interact, and co-create. It’s the merger of technology and entertainment. It’s Hollywood’s next golden age.”
Technotainment’s ambition is vast. “We’re building the infrastructure for streaming 2.0,” Wesley explains. “Streaming 1.0 was Netflix, where content lives on one server and audiences are owned by the platform. Streaming 2.0 means the content creators own their audiences, and the communities around each show can engage, create, and even earn.”
He offers a simple example. “Imagine watching Stranger Things. The community can make live reviews, memes, behind-the-scenes content, and get rewarded for engagement. The content itself becomes a living ecosystem, not a one-way experience.”
Technotainment will also change how money flows through the industry. “We’re adding new revenue streams. Viewers can click on clothes or objects in a scene and buy them instantly. They can purchase concert tickets or merchandise directly from the stream. Every stakeholder benefits from the studio, the artist, and even the audience.”
Blockchain underpins it all. “It’s not about hype,” Wesley says. “It’s about efficiency. Blockchain makes revenue distribution fast, transparent, and fair. Today, if you stream a song on Spotify, it takes thirteen months for the artist to get paid. Our system can do it in days.”
Technotainment will be chain-agnostic, meaning it can integrate with any blockchain. “We’ll use the right tool for the right job,” he says. “The point is to make things simple, not technical.”
The company is currently developing its own platform while partnering with existing streamers. “We’re building the rails for content, community, and commerce,” he says. “We’ve identified seven genres to start with: personal development, faith and values, art, smart sports, smart music, smart movies, and cannabis media. These are underserved audiences with passion but no home.”
Wesley’s team reads like a who’s who of Hollywood. “Our COO is Mallory Galligan from NBC and FX. Our legal counsel, Simona Solomon, was head of legal for Tidal and worked at Disney and Comcast. Our music division is led by Eddie Wenrich, former head of Epic and Columbia Records. Doug Stanley, producer of Deadliest Catch, is developing a new reality series with us in Colombia. And we’ve just partnered with Jerry Wanda from the Fugees, who runs Platinum Studios in New York.”
The company’s first funding event in Las Vegas this year was a success. “We invited 400 people. Eight hundred ended up investing. We raised two million dollars in three days,” he says. “We want a community of supporters, not just venture capitalists.”
Technotainment’s token, $CAST, will launch in 2026, with the first platform going live in September next year. “We’re not trying to be the next Netflix,” Wesley says. “We want to power the next 10,000 Netflixes.”
He believes the secret lies in engagement. “In web two, people watched. In web three, they participated. In streaming 2.0, they own a piece of the story. Engagement is the new currency.”
As for his personal journey, he laughs when I mention his nickname, Mr. Malta. “It started as a joke at a blockchain conference in London. I kept talking about Malta, and someone shouted, ‘Hey, Mr. Malta!’ It stuck. Then the Maltese government asked me to become a diplomat for emerging tech. So the joke became real.”
Malta is now home to major blockchain firms, from OKX to Gemini. “It’s a small island with big ambition,” Wesley says. The same could be said of him.
Technotainment, it seems, is not just reimagining streaming. It is redefining entertainment itself, where audiences no longer watch from the sidelines but join the stage.
For more information, visit technotainment.com and prepare to enter Hollywood’s new golden age.
