Miami Heat power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo is the most recent athlete to be named a PlayStation Playmaker. The so-called “Greek Freak” and NBA great joins the likes of NBA icon LeBron James and New York Knicks superhero Jalen Brunson, actor and comedian King Bach, Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard, professional BMX athlete Nigel Sylvester, WNBA All-Rookie NaLyssa Smith and fellow WNBA player Angel Reese, NFL stars Ja’Marr Chase and CeeDee Lamb, French football freestyler Lisa Zimouche, Belgian football star Romelu Lukaku and more since Sony Interactive Entertainment started the Playmaker program in 2023.
Over the past three years, Allan Gungormez, chief strategy officer at Modern Logic, has worked with Sony and Playstation to produce the campaign. The latest iteration features Antetokounmpo talking about how much he loves to play PlayStation games with his three brothers.
In 2014, famed NBA reporter Adrian Wojnarowski wrote a story that cemented a legend about a very young, very green rookie player for the Milwaukee Bucks. The 18-year-old Antetokounmpo was taken fifth in the NBA draft in 2013, after spending most of his life living in near poverty with his undocumented Nigerian family in Athens, Greece. He came to the States to play basketball without his family in tow because they did not yet have their papers to travel.
He had always loved video games so during his rookie season – in which he was earning $1.9 million a year plus a $190 per diem when traveling for away games – he splurged and spent $399 on a PlayStation console for himself. He was shocked to learn that his teammates would typically buy a PlayStation while they were on the road and then just leave it in the hotel room when they departed, buying a new one the next time they felt like playing. Conversely, Antetokounmpo felt so guilty that he had indulged while his family remained in Athens that he sold the console to Bucks assistant manager Nick Van Exel. When his family was finally able to join him in February 2014, he bought a new one.
“Play was where we dreamed. It was freedom. It made me imagine a lot of things when I was a kid and it’s just joy. Play allowed me to spend quality time with people that I loved,” Antetokounmpo says in the spot.
Today, Antetokounmpo, who led the Bucks to an NBA Championship over the Phoenix Suns in 2021, is considered one of the NBA’s greatest players, commanding a $58 million-plus annual salary. But he still enjoys playing PlayStation.
“Now the stage is bigger, the lights are brighter, but the feeling is the same,” he says.
Antetokounmpo’s story made him perfect for the PlayStation Playmaker program. “[Sony] looks for people with a natural connection to the game,” Gungormez said.
The campaign, which Antetokounmpo posted on his Instagram and Tiktok where he has 16.1 and 6.3 million followers respectively, focuses on the basketball player’s global background and his family. It’s designed using fun multimedia images and the ever-present PlayStation symbols.
“This series is designed for the internet,” Gungormez said. “It’s one of those things where the distribution is baked into the playmaker, with them letting the audience know about the natural connection they have with the product.”
The trick is to produce a campaign that lets fans feel like they are getting to know their heroes a bit better without telling them things they’ve heard many times before.
“Someone like Giannis, people already know so much about him,” Gungormez said. “They’ve been interviewed 1,000 times so we don’t want to make another piece where it’s a famous athlete answering questions. A lot of times we’ll work with the playmaker and their team to talk to their families and to get childhood photos and actual bits of memories that haven’t been put out there. That feels like the most rewarding part of this. We get to take people down a personal path and learn a little bit about their life. We start with a global superstar and eventually we get to them just being them.”
The original footage of Antetokounmpo in the campaign was shot remotely while the NBA star was in Budapest for the UEFA Champions League finals. Gungormez and his team have also performed remote shoots in London and Madrid for the PlayStation Playmaker campaign,
Besides releasing the pieces on Antetokounmpo’s social platforms, PlayStation also posts the spots on their own YouTube channels and other social feeds.
Said: Gungormez: "[Giannis’] connection to play is so genuine. He’s a super recognizable athlete. He’s the funny, curious guy with an almost LeBron-like trajectory. He’s the superstar that everyone knows and the guy who really loves to play.”
