The LA Valiant and the San Francisco Shock face off in the Overwatch League.
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Why Lionsgate is bullish on the future of esports

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 10 min

The Overwatch League (OWL) had a great debut a couple of weeks ago, with more than 10 million viewers tuning in during the first week of the inaugural esports league featuring Blizzard’s Overwatch first-person shooter game.

One of the early believers in esports was Peter Levin, president of interactive ventures, games, and digital strategy at Lionsgate. He invested in Immortals — the Los Angeles esports team, which created a new team, LA Valiant, to participate in the Overwatch League. Lionsgate also invested in Immortals/LA Valiant. Activision Blizzard sold the Overwatch League franchises for an estimated $20 million, and it gave each franchise owner a region as part of a worldwide geographic competition.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.