Tomorrowland Ventures, the investment arm of WEAREONE.world, has acquired theme developer Eye-Opener.
The acquisition brings Siemon Ariens, CEO and co-founder of Eye-Opener, back full circle to where his career began as a stage manager for Tomorrowland in 2012. “A group of friends and I got involved in organising a local event, and for our final edition we booked Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike. Through their tour manager at the time, I was given the opportunity to work as a stage manager at festivals such as Tomorrowland, Laundry Day and Summerfestival,” he shares, describing that as the moment everything clicked. “I discovered in the events industry what I wanted to do: music, organisation and, above all, building things.”
Siemon approached Marijn Venmans looking for some freelance work and walked away with a full-time job as a booking agent at Bass Bookings (later Structure Agency). Not long after, he started managing Mark With a K and helped build his journey to the top.
In 2014, Siemon started experimenting as an entrepreneur, with everything from artist management and event handling to video and more “ideas that worked” – as well as “many ideas that failed completely”.
Eventually, Structure Agency and his artist management company merged and continued to grow under the name Platform, with Tomorrowland later joining as a partner to strengthen the entity’s position in an increasingly competitive market.
In 2020, Siemon – together with co-founder and creative director Lars Van Den Dungen – turned his full attention to Eye-Opener, which designs, engineers, produces and installs themed environments and experiences for clients such as Walibi Belgium, Walibi Rhône-Alpes, Phantasialand, Plopsa, Studio 100, Le PAL and Bellewaerde Park. The company was jointly responsible for Dock World, the maritime-themed area at Walibi Belgium (for example), which won the Park World Excellence Award for Best Theming in 2025.
More recently, they started working with Tomorrowland as well, collaborating with the set production company Fisheye – which WEAW and Tomorrowland Ventures also have stakes in – on the façades for the Partnerlane and three retail shops at the festival.
Now, Siemon’s two worlds officially come together again as Eye-Opener becomes part of the WEAREONE.world (WAOW) ecosystem. “It's special to be working with Tomorrowland again today,” the CEO says.
“Years later, we are once again standing together at the beginning of a new chapter: building permanent experiences designed to last for many years.”
Building new worlds together
Lars explains that, with access to a broader network to complement and enhance its existing expertise, this partnership will let Eye-Opener take on much larger projects, new international clients, and even more scale while still retaining its identity and operations: “We start from ideas and stories and translate them into worlds that people can truly experience… Through our partnership with Tomorrowland Ventures, we can bring ideas to life on a scale that would be more difficult for us to achieve on our own.”
Speaking of not doing things alone, the consultants on this deal include WEOW’s long-time advisory partner Monard Law (with Pieter van den Broeck, Thibault Goister and Marie-Laure Dubois) and the M&A team at Lawtree Advocaten (with Niels Van den Heuvel, Sane Van den Abbeele and Jonathan Humpe) behind Eye-Opener.
Monard Law also advised WEOW and Tomorrowland Ventures on the acquisition of their stakes in Fisheye, as well as Belgian video production company Prismax and logistics player STND.
“At Monard Law, we believe that great work is about more than getting the deal done. It is about going the extra mile – with energy, commitment and a smile – especially for clients like these,” says Pieter, partner at Monard Law. “Here’s to ambitious clients, great partnerships and many more milestones ahead.”
