Luc Delrue

Luc Delrue's central argument is that Flanders possesses genuine, underappreciated strength in entertainment and stage technology, and that this strength is being squandered through lack of infrastructure and lack of ambition. He points to the sector's global weight with concrete figures, noting that Barco's share of cinema screens worldwide is larger than commonly assumed: "ik werd gecorrigeerd dat dat geen 50 maar 65 procent is van alle schermen van de cinema's wereldwijd" ¹². He also frames the region's technical dominance in almost folkloric terms, observing that behind the scenes of major international productions the working language is often Flemish rather than English, as in his description of Las Vegas shows: "er wordt meer West-Vlaams achter de schermen gesproken dan dat daar Engels gesproken wordt" ¹². For Delrue this is not a throwaway anecdote but evidence that Belgian and Flemish companies (Barco, Stageco, AED, PRG among them) already lead a global industry, which is precisely why he believes the region has both the credibility and the obligation to build something bigger around that expertise.

That "something bigger" is his proposed Entertainment Valley along the A12 in the Rupelstreek, near Boom. In his account this is not a single venue but a three-part ecosystem: a business campus meant to attract international scale-ups and startups, a research and prototyping center linked to imec that functions less like a theater and more like a test circuit for self-driving cars, and satellite venues such as AB and Tomorrowland where prototypes can be tried out in front of real audiences ¹². He is explicit that this plan is a corrective response to a missed opportunity: after Brexit, Flanders failed to capture any of the companies looking to relocate, simply because there was no structure in place to receive them. "Wij hebben eigenlijk niks binnengehaald na de brexit. We hadden daar ook geen programma voor, we hadden daar geen landingsplaats voor," he says ¹², and Entertainment Valley is presented explicitly as the belated fix for that gap.

A second recurring theme is talent retention, which he treats as an urgent, almost existential problem for Flemish gaming and entertainment tech. He cites Howest's DAE, twice ranked the best gaming school in the world, as proof that Flanders trains excellent people, only to watch roughly 80% of graduates leave because the domestic market is too small and foreign salaries are more attractive ¹. This brain drain is tied in his thinking to a structural mismatch between how games get made and how they get financed: games typically need about three years to reach market, while equity funds want returns within roughly 1.5 to 2 years. He sees this mismatch as the sector's core bottleneck, and argues that closing it is not optional but a matter of survival: "de concurrentieslag zal gewonnen worden in de snelheid en wie AI het best toepast" ¹². AI, in his framing, is not a peripheral technology trend but the specific mechanism that can compress development timelines enough to satisfy investors without sacrificing quality, and he states flatly that he knows no successful company in Flanders that views this negatively: "ik ken geen enkel succesvol bedrijf in Vlaanderen die op dat vlak negatief kijkt" ¹.

Delrue's thinking about audiences follows a similar logic of urgency and infrastructure-over-tradition. He argues that younger and more diverse audiences will not be won back through existing cultural institutions, however well-funded, because those institutions are simply the wrong entry point for people who did not grow up inside that tradition. His own words are direct: "die jonge mensen, die andere generaties, die mensen die met een andere achtergrond zitten, die gaan die culturele wereld pas instappen als dat op een digitale manier gebeurt en niet via de cultuurhuizen" ¹. He extends this into a broader claim about cost and access, contrasting a digital creation workspace priced around €1 million with the roughly €100 million required for a traditional 2,000-seat hall ¹. For Delrue, this is not simply a budgeting preference but a strategic bet: inclusion is cheaper and more effective when built on digital tools than on new physical monuments to culture, and groups like the Brussels rap scene, in his account, are already showing what that looks like in practice by preferring creation spaces over subsidies or formal venues ².

Underlying all of this is a wider societal claim he makes almost in passing but treats as foundational: "alles wordt beleving eigenlijk... het gaat over een belevingssamenleving" ². Entertainment technology, gaming, live events and cultural participation are, in his view, converging into a single experience economy, and Flanders' technical leadership in staging and screens gives it a rare foothold in that convergence if it can act quickly enough. The throughline across his statements is speed: speed in adopting AI to fix gaming's financing mismatch, speed in building infrastructure so the region does not repeat its Brexit failure, and speed in shifting cultural access toward digital formats before another generation disengages entirely. His concrete takeaway is that Flanders already has the technical credibility to lead, evidenced by Barco's screen share and the West-Flemish voices working global stages, but that credibility will erode without a deliberate structure, namely something like Entertainment Valley, to convert existing expertise into retained talent, faster products and broader audiences ¹².