NOAH WHINSTON is a college dropout who has "raised tens of millions of dollars" as CEO of the Immortals franchise, and now he is "aiming to get in on the ground floor of what could be the next big professional sport" with a spot in the Overwatch League, according to a profile by Christopher Palmeri of BLOOMBERG NEWS, who writes under the header, "How A 23-Year-Old Gamer Got Billionaires To Back His Esports Team." Whinston has attracted investors such as junk bond investor MICHAEL MILKEN and AEG Chair PHIL ANSCHUTZ. His Overwatch League team, the L.A. Valiant, will "start competing next month" after paying game publisher Activision Blizzard $20M for franchise rights. To create Immortals, Whinston and L.A.-based venture capitalist CLINTON FOY "bought an existing esports business, Team 8, and renamed it." They then added investors like Lionsgate President of Interactive Ventures, Games & Digital Strategy PETER LEVIN and a VC fund affiliated with the band LINKIN PARK. Immortals now "fields teams playing four games," including Valve’s "DOTA 2" and Nintendo’s "Super Smash Bros." The franchise failed to win a spot in Riot Games' North American League of Legends Championship Series, "despite having a team in a prior version of the league and seeming like a shoo-in to everyone in the industry." Meanwhile, Whinston’s outfit "houses its two dozen pros in an apartment building" in Marina Del Rey, Calif. Players then practice from 10:00am-6:00pm PT at Immortals’ Culver City campus, where they "scrimmage and in some cases play other teams, working from inside a handful of garage-like 'pods'" (BLOOMBERG NEWS, 11/27).
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