Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., is jumping into esports, the burgeoning business of professional videogame playing.

Ms. Whitman has invested in Los Angeles-based Immortals LLC, a global esports company founded in 2015, and will join its board, she said in an interview Monday. Immortals owns and operates an esports franchise, the Los Angeles Valiant, in a league run by videogame publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. that was launched in January.

It...