Peter Levin has always been a gamer.
Levin has been a leading gaming industry investor and media executive for decades, serving as a digital strategy executive at Lionsgate and Legendary Entertainment before co-founding the venture capital firm Griffin Gaming Partners — where Levin currently serves as a managing director — in 2019. When asked about how he first became interested in the space, he didn’t mince words: “My origin story as a gamer is, I’m a gamer.”
At last month’s GDC Festival of Gaming, Levin sat down with GamesBeat lead news writer Alexander Lee — that’s me — to record an episode of the BIG Show, GamesBeat’s new podcast designed to capture industry leaders’ candid opinions and insights in a relaxed, after-hours environment. The crux of the discussion was Levin’s belief that businesses positioned at the confluence of gaming, sports fandom and the wider world of media IP are poised for an explosion of growth in the coming years.
“When you look at the demise of broadcast television, those numbers are scary, and to Madison Avenue, they’ve got to find places to deploy capital, and sport is one of them,” Levin said during the interview. “If you look at the gamification of sport, you’ve got the obvious players — PGA 2K, Madden. There are so many opportunities to create different genres, to bring delight to those audiences that love this intersection of gaming, media and sport, and they’re just being underserved.”
The 25-minute episode spanned a wide range of topics, including Levin’s professional background and his strategies to keep Griffin Gaming Partners from getting swept up in hype cycles — and the most prized item in his collection of over 500,000 trading cards. (Want to know what it is? You’ll have to listen to the full episode to find out.)
“Because we play games, we have as deep an analytical bench as anyone in the world,” Levin said. “For our industry, you’ve got to look at the data and be disciplined, and realize that these hype cycles have always been proximate to gaming.”
To listen to the show, click on the Spotify player above — or you can click here to watch the full video if you’re a GB MAX member. Stay tuned for more episodes from the first full season of the BIG Show.