Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Lionsgate Backs eSports Team, The Immortals

In a further boost to the growing e-sports industry, movie studio Lionsgate announced this morning that it has made an investment in the e-sports franchise Immortals. Size of the investment was not announced. Immortals is the team which is backed by such investors as Michael Milken, Steve Kaplan OakTree Capital, Memphis Grizzlies), Greg Milken, Allen DeBevoise, CrossCut Ventures, Clinton Foy, and many, many others. Lionsgate said it the e-sports market has the "potential to transform the face of sports entertainment", and that the deal will help it develop new content and use its distribution platforms to reach a "coveted consumer demographic". The Immortals deal is not the first foray into e-sports for Lionsgate: the company also is an investor in eSports promoter ESL, via Pilgrim Media Group (Lionsgate is the majority investor in Pilgrim); Lionsgate also has a partnership with Microsoft around Halo; and Lionsgate also is an early investor in Mobcrush.

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