FaZe Clan CEO talks growing pains, global expansion, and lawsuits

Editor-in-chief of The Verge Nilay Patel and Verge reporter Julia Alexander sit down with CEO/Co-Owner of FaZe Clan Lee Trink. Lee talks how he runs a multifaceted company from working with talent to the dependence on platforms to selling apparel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody, it's Simon from The Vergecast. This week's interview episode is wild. Julia Alexander joins me. We talk to Lee Trink, the CEO of FaZe Clan. If you haven't heard of FaZe Clan, probably means you're not a teenager. FaZe Clan is an all-in-one esports merchandising influencer marketing agency explosion of a company. It is one of the most interesting platform-based companies around. It is a cultural phenomenon. It was started by a bunch of esports players. Lee was the president of Capital Records. He came on as CEO. He's using a lot of the models of how to build the record industry for the new influencer marketing world. Lee is also just a super interesting guy.

• 0:42Nilay Patel?

  He was really honest with us about the challenges and opportunities of a new business like this. I'm just going to drop you right into it. Julia and I talked to him, and I want to commend him. He answered our questions, and we asked a lot of them. Let's check it out. It's Lee Trink, CEO of FaZe Clan.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Growing teams need a corporate card built for more, something that doesn't sacrifice speed for control. Introducing the American Express Corporate Cash Back Card. Get 1.5% cash back on eligible business purchases, advanced spending controls, and real-time visibility, plus intelligent expense management. Get started at go.amex slash amexcorporate. Terms and cap apply.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing and wearable. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash Apple Watch Series 12.

• 2:01Nilay Patel?

  Julia Alexander, how are you? I'm good. Lee Trink, you are the CEO, co-owner of the FaZe Clan.

• 2:08Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 2:08Nilay Patel?

  How'd you decide to capitalize the Z?

• 2:10Speaker 03

  Um, I didn't do it. I wasn't around when they decided to do it. It was the kids that started FaZe Clan that did it. And it, you know, it's the same kid, you know, the founder, the original founder, uh, you know, FaZe Temper, uh, Tommy, who drew the FaZe logo. Um, thank, thank God he did a great job. He did a great job and it's actually a really cool logo. I, um, that, yeah, they, the kids decided, like, like most things about FaZe Clan, the kids decided it.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 2:37Speaker 03

  And, you know, I showed up late to the party to, uh, try and turn it into a business.

• 2:41Nilay Patel?

  All right, well, we're already deep on the logo. Let's start at the start. What is FaZe Clan?

• 2:46Speaker 03

  What is FaZe Clan? Uh, FaZe Clan is a gaming organization. Um, that's, you know, that's really split up into two parts. There's the part that is kind of the buzzword of 2019 of esports, um, which is the competitive side. And, you know, where we have, we compete in six different games. We've got six, six teams, uh, that make up about half of the FaZe Clan members, about 35 or so of, uh, of our, of our members. And then there's the second part, which is content creators, which are, you know, we're making YouTube videos. We're streaming on platforms like Twitch and Mixer. Um, we're on Snapchat, we're on doing IG stories where we create content that is about gaming or it's gaming adjacent.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  There, you know, there are things that relate to, you know, kids that are into gaming or, or people that are into gaming and just their interests. Um, I, I spent, well, I spent several years trying to explain to people outside of gaming that they should pay attention to gaming and they should pay attention to what, to what's going on. And I utilized sort of esports as the tip of that spear because it was a, it was a hot topic. Um, but now what I, what I start to reposition it for people is talking about. Gaming is entertainment and gaming is lifestyle, which is even a harder concept to grasp. Right? Like, I think there was like, uh, you know, what, you know, what the F moment of like, wait a second.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  People are being paid to compete, uh, in video games, like people make money on that, like that's a thing, right? So, okay, now everybody knows that's a thing. Now, the thing that I'm, that I'm explaining is that this is actually a culture. This is like, this is like the lifestyle that surrounds skateboarding culture, except bigger. I compare it to hip hop and I'm not, I'm not the only one I've done. I've, I've, I've had conversations with, you know, really significant people from the music business who've also made that same comparison because in the same way, you know, hip hop was a genre of music. And when it started, that's all people thought it was, but it was actually much, much more. Um, and people built, they identified with that, with that lifestyle and culture.

• 4:55Speaker 03

  And they, they built their lives around what that, what that means. And that's what's happening with, with gaming now. Gaming is, you know, I, I, I say it often that gaming is going to drive culture and lifestyle for this next decade. For sure, probably, probably beyond. But that's a, that's a concept that I think most people don't really understand.

• 5:15Speaker 04

  Well, and I think to break it down a little bit further, you have a really interesting way of explaining FaZe. You have a three-pronged approach, which is that FaZe is like the Lakers, it's like MTV and it's like Supreme. So break that down a little bit for people listening who are still like, I get that people get paid to play video games. What is FaZe?

• 5:32Speaker 03

  Right. So, so that's sort of the Lakers part, right? Like Lakers are a competitive basketball team. We are a competitive esports organization. We have teams that go and they train and they show up to tournaments and they compete for, you know, for, for trophies and for, for, for money. You know, so that's the comparison, that's the through line there. Uh, the, the comparison to Supreme is that we are also an apparel brand. And we're going to be branching out into other consumer goods. And Supreme is, is specific in that, you know, Supreme is the definition of that hype beast model. And we behave like that, our apparel behaves like that. We've had, you know, individual, you know, clothing drops where we've sold nearly $2 million

• 6:17Speaker 03

  worth of apparel in one day.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  You guys closed down part of Soho a few weeks ago.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Well, that was, yeah, we did. That was, you know, around Fortnite World Cup. We had a pop up in Soho and, I mean, honestly, we were floored by that reaction. You know, there were thousands and thousands of kids that showed up. We, you know, the cop, we were begging the cops to just let us stay open for an hour so that the kids could come in and meet the guys. And it was, it was incredible. And so we, we, we command that type of excitement around our apparel. And then there's the MTV comparison and there's two components to it. So we, we make content on essentially a daily basis that reach a lot of fans. You know, our, our collective social media footprint is, is well over 200 million.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  You know, and the consumption around the content is somewhere around 500 million views a month. It's like a cable network. And the other part of that, that comparison is not about MTV now necessarily, but MTV in its heyday really spoke for that generation. And they really defined what that, you know, it was really Gen X at the time, what, what they were into. They were, they were their voice. And that's how I view FaZe Clan. We are the voice of this current gaming generation. We, we uniquely understand them. We create content specifically for them.

• 7:48Speaker 03

  And at the moment, it is, you know, on the, on the platforms like YouTube and Twitch and, and, you know, and Snap and Instagram, but that's the beginning. We're, we're not limited to the platforms. We can make content of any different length as long as it's authentic to who we are and as long as it's something that appeals to our, to our audience.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  So I want to dive into platforms. There's nothing I like talking about with media executives more than how we will defeat the platforms together as a united front, but. You actually were in the music business. You're the president of Capital Records. You've worked with some of the biggest artists in the world. How did you end up as a CEO of a bunch of video game players?

• 8:25Speaker 03

  So about, you know, four and a half years ago, somebody that worked for me brought me the idea and actually showed me an article. The article was mainly about the viewership of the League of Legends finals. And he made the suggestion, said, "What do you think about, you know, us going in to manage a team?" Or "Teams," he said at the time, which sort of showed how little we even understood back then. Because we said, "Oh, yeah, teams. We'll manage teams." And that really set us on the path. And I started calling, you know, people that I knew within, it was really WME who was involved in ELeague. And because of the music business, I had some great contacts there. And I said, "Hey, I'm interested in this space. Can you

• 9:07Speaker 03

  connect me to your guys?" And they eventually connected me to FaZe Clan. And the way it started was I was really started as an advisor. And then I had people that worked for me full-time that were working on FaZe. And then as the industry exploded, as I started to really understand the breadth and the depth of what FaZe Clan both was and what it could be, I made the decision to close my music management company, because that's what I did after Capital. I had my own management company. I decided to walk away from that business and go do this full-time.

• 9:41Nilay Patel?

  So what was your first move? You show up, you don't have a bunch of pop-up stores, you don't have a house full of teenagers streaming video games. Right now, you're this empire. But you show up and it's a bunch of kids playing video games. What's your first move to, "We're gonna make money"?

• 9:55Speaker 03

  The first move was really trying to understand what's going on. And that was no small feat. And it gives me sympathy or empathy to other peers from the traditional space in terms of how hard it is to understand the difference between...

• 10:15Speaker 03

  What the entertainment business has been for whatever seventy-five or a hundred years, which has dealt with platform changes and this new audience, this is, there's a, it's, it's a sea change in the way these, these fans want to consume their content and what their relationship is with, with a brand like FaZe Clan. And it's really hard to understand that because it doesn't fit into the neat little boxes that people have a tendency to want to put it in. They want to say, oh, it's like this or it's like that. And it's a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and then a little bit of something that's never existed before. And it's that combination. And then, so, so the key for, for, you know, for me is how do you, how do you turn it into a business?

• 10:57Speaker 03

  We started bringing in, it's, it's, you know, I've, I have a partner that, that I'm running with Greg Selko, who's the president of the company. And, and also luck, luckily for, for all of us, the same way I come from a culture business, he, he came from the, you know, the fashion, in the fashion business and, and e-comm. And so we also, we had a unique past experience in which to understand that there's a delicate balance between culture and commerce, that it's not just about where, you know, putting in as many cash registers as, as you can in between the output of the brand and the, and the consumer or the fan. It's about, it's about having a, a delicate balance in which, you know, you don't overly commercialize it.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  You're better off under-commercializing it, at least in the front end. And it, it doesn't mean that you, you know, it, it's okay to make mistakes and certainly we've made mistakes. But walking that tightrope between, you know, preserving what the fans love about it, which can be smothered by over-commercialization. And that's, look, we're still, we're still wrestling with that, with that balance.

• 12:05Nilay Patel?

  What was the easiest money that you made? Um, cause I, I talked to CEOs and they're like, I came into the business. I like looked around and figured out what the hell is going on. And I was like, all we gotta do is flip that switch and like, we'll start making some money. What was the first switch you flipped?

• 12:19Speaker 03

  The, the, I would say the apparel. The apparel was the, was really the low hanging fruit because we, The merch. We, we weren't do, we weren't selling enough apparel. And to be honest, we're still not selling enough apparel because we're moving slow. And we'd rather move slow and put, leave money on the table than go too far and start to, you know, to, to hurt the, what, what the impact of the brand is. I mean, you know, that, that drop, you know, that we did with, you know, it was literally two colorways. It was like the, the Champion collaboration that we did. You know, it was, it was a navy blue and a heather gray and two million bucks in one day. And to be honest though, I wouldn't say that we expected that.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  The, you know, the first surprise I had was the first Champion drop, which we did a year ago. We did Black Friday a year ago. And we were, just to, just to give you a sense of the, the fact that we were trying to understand how big the brand was. You know, that first drop, we did, we did black and red. And we were debating, leading up to it, we were saying, all right, well, how many should we make? The merch team was like, we should, because we wanted to sell out. We wanted to make sure it was exclusive and limited and we wanted to sell out. And so the, the merch team was like, we're going to do 300 units. And then the talent pushed back. They were like, you know what? Let's do a thousand units. Okay. We're going to do a thousand units. Let's go try it.

• 13:40Speaker 03

  You know, I'm home in, you know, in New York for Thanksgiving and we're all getting ready because, you know, midnight, you know, midnight on Thanksgiving, the, the site goes live. We sold that thousand units in under two minutes.

• 13:53Nilay Patel?

  That's crazy.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  And we just said, keep it going. Call up Champion, see how many they have. Let's keep it going. Tell them to turn it off when, when they're done. They turned us off 28 minutes into it. We sold, you know, $650,000 worth. And we were shocked, but that's also part of this exploration. Because all of these things are new, we don't necessarily know what the appetite is of our fans. And we're learning that.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  So it's interesting to me hearing you, you come from a more traditional entertainment space where you're beholden to sales and traditional investors and dealing with that. And a lot of this is new to you, but a lot of it, and I cover YouTube, a lot of it is old for YouTube. This is traditional merch sales. This is traditional, like this is them monetizing parasocial relationships. This is saying, I'm not beholden to investors, I'm beholden to my audience liking me. That is how I sell my T-shirts. What did you learn from the kids coming up where they're going, no, we can do a thousand because we know what it's like when you came into it?

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Well, again, they're going to have a keener understanding of the relationship with the audience, right? First of all, they've been in it for years when I haven't. Well, now at this point, I've been in there for a few years. But, you know, some of these guys have been in now nine years into this brand. And, you know, a lot of it was listening to what they said, listening to what their concerns are, pushing them where I thought it was safe to push them and, you know, testing things out with the audience that it's okay to make a mistake. I mean, that's been, that's been part of it is, we don't, you know, the brand is strong enough that we can make some mistakes, you know, we don't want to make a mistake.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  And again, it's always better to sort of underplay your hand than overplay your hand.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  But the interesting thing about the brand, right, and is that it's made up of individual talent and people are fans of those individual talents. And so it's not like saying I'm a fan of NBC, they make certain shows. It's I'm a fan of Banks, I'm a fan of rugs, who are two popular people on the FaZe Clan team. Something happens this past year where you have the most popular streamer in the world, a guy who goes by Tifu, who was on FaZe for a while, and all of a sudden there is just this storm of controversy. And people are going, what do we do about FaZe? What do we do? Do we support Tifu? Do we support FaZe? This is something that is relatively common in the YouTube world. It's why drama channels exist. But it would have been new for you, I imagine, coming in and kind of seeing what this chaos can be like. Now there's a lawsuit involved.

• 16:24Speaker 04

  I was hoping you could walk us through how you're dealing with everything going on with the case right now.

• 16:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, when there was a fight on the real world in the MTV, that's my time. So I'm like very familiar with my time with MTV. Like when there's a fight on the real world, they all sue each other and then like make their own drama channel alerts about that, right? Like that's new. Like you're actually in the real world.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  So I'll say a couple of things. One is, it's not so new for me because in the record business, you have artists that sue labels. Yeah. And it's, it's not uncommon. I mean, let's say, fighting with the label is really common, suing the label, much less common, but it exists and it's something that I've, I've, I've been, I've been a part of, on both sides, right? On the, on the, you know, on the label side and the artist's side. So it didn't feel that far into me, as far as the ground rules, right? There are some fundamental ways of, of how you conduct yourself, especially when it's under public scrutiny, that's really important. And so there were,

• 17:27Speaker 03

  there were lessons to borrow from that. I think that part of the, I think that even though it might have been common in YouTube, the drama, but they weren't, I don't think the lawsuits were, were common. And I think the reason why it was such big news in gaming, it was really the first one. And here you have, it was the perfect, it was perfect for everybody, right? Maybe except for us. Where you've got a clash of the titans, you have the biggest gaming org and the biggest, you know, the biggest gaming streamer, the biggest pro in the world, in a very public, very ugly, ugly fight. And, you know, everybody, and it was at the right time, when esports was a really buzzy term and, you know, there

• 18:09Speaker 03

  was starting to be global news. So everybody commented on it. And, but what I would say a lot is, you know, that this is not uncommon in basketball or football. And by the time we have the third one, it won't be global, earth-shattering news, right? This was the first one, and so it was really big news. And, look, it also happened to be the way, the way they did it was a particularly ugly way.

• 18:38Speaker 04

  Well, and then what happened afterwards, I think if you look at Columbia, uh, sorry, Capital being sued, most people at Capital would be told not to tweet about it. Most people would, it would not be public discourse from company representatives. Right after the lawsuit went up, there was a very explicit lengthy thread from FaZe Banks, who up until very, you know, about a year ago, was the face of FaZe Clan. And this kind of, and people feel like they are entitled to streamers and YouTubers because of that relationship and because they feel beholden to that. So this comes, everything gets messier really quick. And I want to know what it's like inside that house when you're having meetings and going, how do we, do you tell them not to tweet about it?

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  Are you like, change your name to a symbol like Prince and get out?

• 19:23Speaker 03

  Look, it's a real challenge because emotions are running high and there's this need to defend, right? And it's, it is part of YouTube culture. And it's difficult to balance the nature of that culture and some, and the emotional response that Banks is having with sort of what we should do strategically as a business. What is the best thing to do? Now, happens to be in this, I would say Banks falls into, there were two things that happened. One is there, there have been moments where I've had to talk to him or somebody else where we're asking just with a plea of,

• 20:05Speaker 03

  please put the phone down. Just put it down. Just, I know when you look at it and you read it, you can't help yourself because you're upset. You're understandably upset, but we need to be measured. We need to be coordinated in how we're going to tell our story. Because when it was something that was that big, we had really, there were, there were sort of two different pools. There was the social community, but there was also the traditional media community. And both were coming at us. And there's a way to deal with, and there's a way to tell your story on socials, but there's all, there's, there's somewhat of a different way that you need to navigate the traditional media world. And so balancing that is tough.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  And while this is happening, you guys are out trying to raise investment capital for FaZe.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  And what, what are those conversations like? Where you're trying to say, we are a professional gaming organization, entertainment organization. We want to do bigger things with bigger companies. At the same time, you have the biggest stream in the world. Filing a lawsuit and the face of FaZe Clan going off on Twitter in a way that is common with rappers, is common with YouTubers.

• 21:16Nilay Patel?

  It's common with Taylor Swift.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Common with Taylor Swift.

• 21:19Nilay Patel?

  I'll just throw that one out there.

• 21:21Speaker 04

  But I feel like trying to position FaZe as a gaming organization, a professional one while this is happening must have been difficult.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's difficult, but you know, I'm also a realist about what are the components that make us great. And it is Banks's passion and the way he puts it all out. Like, everybody knows who's reading what he's saying. That guy's not scripted, he's not taking notes, he's not doing anything, he's pouring it straight from his heart, through his fingers and out into socials. And there's something incredibly powerful about that. And so, you know, if you were to say to me, what would you rather have? Would you rather have, you know, somebody who is gonna pour it all out and create sometimes something that's a little bit messy or not have it?

• 22:12Speaker 03

  I'll take it messy because that's the real deal. And ultimately, what, you know, the reason why I think FaZe Clan is so popular is it's warts and all with us, right? And I think that, look, looking back, the incident with T-Fu was a turning point for the company, for the company, right? Forget about the brand. I think more so for the company than the brand. And I think the way we conducted ourselves, I think the transparency in which we spoke to our audience directly, and it was, listen, it was brutal. You know, it was, you know, my office was a war room. There were, we were teamed in there, we were talking strategy and blah, blah, blah.

• 22:54Speaker 03

  But ultimately, what we, what the ultimate decision, the overarching decision is, we are going to talk directly to our fans and we're gonna tell them the entire story. And, you know, and that's what we did.

• 23:07Nilay Patel?

  Is that when you were lawsuit?

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Different lawsuits are different lawsuits are not one on social media.

• 23:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Um, so, you know, and, and look, it's part of what makes it complex. Because whatever you're going to say on social media, you know, certainly could come back to haunt you in a lawsuit. But, you know, for us, the, the relationship with the fans takes paramount importance to what, what the lawsuit, you know, what happens with the lawsuit, although we plan on winning the lawsuit.

• 23:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, you were, you were like a DA.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  I was a DA.

• 23:37Nilay Patel?

  You're like, I'm gonna win the lawsuit.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  We're, we're gonna win the lawsuit.

• 23:40Speaker 04

  It's a relationship with the.

• 23:42Nilay Patel?

  You heard it here first.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  The relationship with fans is also an interesting thing, and I want to talk about one other, uh, FaZe member. Possibly, I, I still think he's still a FaZe member, but he moved out of the house and we have to talk about Jarvis.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 04

  Who, cause, cause, so Jarvis, for people who don't know, was a professional Fortnite player. He was banned for, well, I would argue, is a misdemeanor, but he received a lifetime ban.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 04

  Uh, the thing is, the thing, the reason why I call it misdemeanor is because FaZe is a powerful, not just organization, but company. When this happened, I would love to know what the conversations with Epic were like. This is a popular player living in a $12 million mansion who's streaming, who generates millions of dollars in streams and, uh, gaming, uh, tournaments. So, that conversation.

• 24:26Speaker 03

  So, what I'll say is he actually, he aspires to be a professional. He had not, he's not, he wasn't signed as a professional. He was signed as a content creator. Um, he did not make it into Fortnite World Cup, although he came really close. Um, look, it was brutal. It was tough. It was, uh, but I think it's also important to be sensitive to Epic's issues. You know, do I feel like it was, it was a, a bridge too far? I, I do. It's, it's their decision to make, not ours. We, we respect their rules. But I, I, you know, I'm sympathetic to a 17-year-old kid who.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  You know, who doesn't cheat during a competition, he makes a video who he believes is going to be an entertaining video, doesn't hide anything, doesn't, you know, this is not something that was done in a dark corner of room. This was something that was done and broadcast on YouTube.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  Just for the listeners, what did he do to get him banned?

• 25:20Speaker 03

  So he made a video, there's a, there was a way to basically hack the Fortnite game with an aimbot and it's outlawed. And he basically said, hey, this is what it looks like when you, you know, when you use the program like that. And he even says, you know, he says during the video, don't do this, you're going to get banned immediately. And one of his mistakes, he made several of them, was thinking, well, if I do it on some random account, not my account, well, then if that account gets shut down, it doesn't matter. He's a 17-year-old kid. And again, you know, I'm hopeful that with time, maybe things will change. But we support Jarvis while we don't

• 26:04Speaker 03

  support what he did. He's certainly contrite about what he did. He's posted a video about it. He was transparent about it.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  Are you still having conversations with Epic? You're saying you're hopeful in time it'll change. Are you guys talking to Sweeney and the team over there?

• 26:18Speaker 03

  We are gently trying to continue the conversation. But also, it's important for us to be respectful. And look, we've got, you know, it's not a matter of like throwing weight around or anything like that. It's about, look, this whole thing is new, right? We're still, you know, gaming has been around for a long time, but this level, this public scrutiny, the volume of gamers that are, you know, that are playing, the attention that we have, this is all new. So I think it's important for all of us to be open-minded, to kind of tread carefully and to, you know, and to, you know, life is long. So.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Well, the other thing that's new, and this is an issue that's personally close to my heart, I covered a lot, is a lot of content creators, YouTubers, Twitch streamers, Feel like they have to constantly be besting their last video, right? So it's, and it's constant output. There is a quote from a New York Times article about FaZe, where one of your streamers says, "I spend 90% of my time in my room. I just want a day off." And that's because they have to create content. And you guys are more than an organization. You're more than just a bunch of kids. You're a company. And what are the mental health initiatives? When you've got, burnout is a major issue that we are finally talking about with YouTube and Twitch, and now it's an industry-wide thing. Do you have mental health resources for the players, for the content creators?

• 27:37Speaker 03

  No, I mean, we, we, we speak to them about it. We have, our managers are sensitive to it. We never are pushing the output level, right? These kids are, they tend to be self-starters. But the reality is, there needs to be more awareness for our guys, but also for the overall industry. And, you know, historically, mental health has been not something that is talked about, you know, openly. And I think we have, we have the ability to change that. We've talked about, you know, we've talked about, really, what is, you know, what are FaZe charities? What are, you know, what does philanthropy look for, look like for us?

• 28:19Speaker 03

  And we talk about things that are really key and core to our guys. And we talk about the, you know, mental health aspects.

• 28:31Speaker 05

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competition between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an Ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 29:00Speaker 06

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline? That's bull spend. And marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard, confessions.

• 29:09Speaker 07

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive-sounding metric I had: impressions.

• 29:16Speaker 06

  Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 29:31Nilay Patel?

  You're in the music industry, like, the Rolling Stones are on tour now. Like, they're gonna sell out that stadium. They're, I love the Rolling Stones, they're like, they're old guys.

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:39Nilay Patel?

  But they can still do it, they can get back together and like, they can work their schedule. Is this career sustainable? Can you be 50 years old and do a reunion tour, Fortnite? Can you sell out the greatest hits? I, like, we're at the beginning, right? So like, you look at the underlying assets of other media industries and, I don't know, we've got a book that we're gonna write and we're gonna sell the book and that's gonna generate revenue even if I don't have to like, work 10 hours a day every day. I'm an aging rock star, I'm gonna collect my checks and maybe I'm like, you know what? I'm Mick Jagger, I'm gonna do this one more time and we're gonna go sell out a stadium. Is that sustainable for this kind of career?

• 30:17Speaker 03

  I think we're gonna find out. I think that, um, I think it's about evolving with your audience, right? Your audience is getting older and the, your audience is going through some evolution. You know, the difference between what these guys do and what the Rolling Stones do is the Rolling Stones can play their hits from 40 years ago and it's about a nostalgia moment. That doesn't work with this, right? So you-

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  But most celebrities can capture that.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  Not necessarily, if you're an, if you're an actor or if you're a TV writer, you can't-

• 30:48Nilay Patel?

  Ah, Robert De Niro got de-aged, he's strutting around on Netflix like, eight hours at a time. His got way bluer.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Uh, but those are the rare exceptions. In, in general, you have to figure out what your next thing is. Even as a musician, you have artists that do some, some type of evolution or, you know, we, we tend to refer to it as reinvention, where I don't think it's reinvention, I think it's, it's evolution. Um, and I think that, you know, I think we need to instill that concept with these guys. But the other thing that they have available to them is because of the way FaZe is a business, you can also evolve from the content creator and being from one side of the camera to the other. So you might be able to, you know, there, look, I think the one thing that a lot of YouTubers aspire to be- Is ex YouTubers, right?

• 31:42Speaker 04

  They keep saying that. But as someone who covers YouTube.

• 31:46Nilay Patel?

  We know a lot of people who want to be ex YouTubers.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  The thing is, though, you actually hit on an interesting point, which goes back to your three-pronged rule about Lakers, Supreme, and MTV. At MTV, at a certain point, you age out of being able to be a VJ. And when you're playing professional basketball in the Lakers, you move on to becoming a manager or a coach. Those are your two options. You go behind the camera. Do you worry that as?

• 32:06Nilay Patel?

  Or you're just rich and you're done. That's like another choice.

• 32:09Speaker 04

  That is the goal.

• 32:10Nilay Patel?

  Is that a choice for your guys?

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Why not? If you're... Look, certainly what being rich does, it gives you the opportunity, right? It gives you flexibility to follow what your passion might be outside of that. But I think part of what we don't know is, what does it look like? You know, our guys, the oldest of our guys are in their like mid twenties, right? So we just haven't explored that yet. So, you know, we don't know what that evolution is because even our audience, they're really young. When our audience starts to get older, what do they want? And if our team members can satisfy what that next iteration is of what their current

• 32:56Speaker 03

  audience wants, then they're gonna remain relevant. They might be relevant to a different, you know, a different side of the demo. Right now, the demo is pretty young, right? Like for the most part.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  Because you guys sign young players, too.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  We sign young players.

• 33:10Speaker 04

  Thirteen, fourteen youngest?

• 33:11Speaker 03

  Twelve is our youngest.

• 33:14Nilay Patel?

  What does that contract look like?

• 33:15Speaker 03

  It's a minor contract. It's signed with, it's done with the parents.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  Couldn't stream on YouTube or Twitch without that. May not be able to stream on YouTube come January first, when new guidelines go into.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Well, that's right. And look, we had an incident, which, you know, Tifu outed one of our guys as being under thirteen, and he got kicked off of Twitch.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 03

  And, look, you know, does that mean we shouldn't sign people under thirteen? Maybe. You know, this was a real... You know, when we signed High Sky, to be honest, it was, there wasn't a lot of deep thought about it. It was a kid we liked. We thought he was talented. We thought he was exciting. And we were like, let's go, let's do it because it's part of the exploration of... Of what should we be doing? I don't know. Sometimes we have to try it and go, how's that feel? How does that fit within, within what we're doing?

• 34:07Nilay Patel?

  Is there an ecosystem of like entertainment attorneys who have lived on that? On the client side of the deal, right? Like you know what you want. You're gonna show up. Kid's 12, his parents are like, you're gonna get paid money to play video games. Probably stars and eyes. But do they have a lawyer who's like negotiated with you six times already? Who knows that they shouldn't give up all their merch rights or all of their likeness rights or whatever? Or 80% of.

• 34:31Speaker 03

  So I think it, I think it depends. It depends on who they use. And, you know, there are not a lot of lawyers who are well versed in the space. But also the one thing about especially minors, those deals are short deals. Right? And, you know, for the most part, we don't take a lot of rights. You know, we're, we're, the good news for us is because we have the brand to commercialize. It's not, we don't have to, you know, we don't have to rely on the revenue that we take as a portion of whatever the individual talent is. That's, you know, if we had to make, if we had to build the business

• 35:12Speaker 03

  on kind of the percentage as a manager, as the brand of, of, of our talent. We, it would be, would not be a very illustrious business. But that's an, it's an aspect of it because it's, you know, we're, we're providing them with tremendous value. Take, take High Sky. High Sky, his first Instagram post was, I joined Faze today. Two and a half months later, he had over a million followers. We helped him create a real business.

• 35:40Nilay Patel?

  And is that his business to run? Unsponsored posts and everything there?

• 35:42Speaker 03

  That's his business. Right. We take, we take a vig. We take 20% of the brand deals that we bring in. But that's his business. Those are his.

• 35:50Nilay Patel?

  But if he brings his own brand deals in, he doesn't have to pay you?

• 35:52Speaker 03

  No, that's not true because we, you know, if he brings his own brand deals, part of the reason why he's able to get a deal is because he's in Faze Clan. And I've had this conversation directly with, with the talent, not, you know, he's, he's a kid, but without, with our other talent where they're not kids, they're, they're adults. And, you know, and I'll have an honest conversation with them and say, and I will say, I believe if you bring in a deal, if you get a deal directly. It is partially because of your participation and your your membership in FaZe Clan. And so I think even if we don't bring it to you directly, we've provided 20% value. You know, and I would ask them directly, do you think the brand deals you get, are they 20% more lucrative because of FaZe Clan?

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Forget about whether they would be walking the door or not but for FaZe Clan, but are they more valuable?

• 36:41Speaker 04

  So that opens a question about the situation we're currently in, which we will deem the creator wars, which is what we're seeing happening. I love wars that are not actual wars.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  It's creator wars, streaming wars, platform wars.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  Right. This is also a platform war, but what we're seeing is a lot of people decide if they want to take a deal and go to a company like Microsoft's Mixer, Amazon's Twitch, Google YouTube. I like saying two names. YouTube is now trying to get into it as well. If someone comes to a popular FaZe member, and let's say it's Mixer, and they say, we'll give you $10 million stream exclusively on Mixer, does FaZe get a big portion of that? And if not, can they walk away from FaZe? If they go, you know what, I want to walk away from this entirely and I want to take this deal, do they have the option to back out of their contract?

• 37:27Speaker 03

  If, no, if they're signed to our contract, I mean, that's what contracts are for.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  Can they buy it out, though? Can they say, I don't want to be a part of this right now?

• 37:34Nilay Patel?

  Can Jeff Bezos buy out banks?

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Listen, I guess when somebody comes to us with that conversation, the answer is, look, if somebody's unhappy and doesn't want to be in FaZe Clan, we're not, you know, I don't want to put a gun to anybody's head, but it also doesn't mean that you get to walk away from the contract. I mean, honestly, that's the Tifu situation. All they wanted was to be out of the contract, which is convenient when we helped build him from when we signed him and his total socials were 400,000, and in one year's time, he went to 22 million.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Are you guys having conversations with the platforms themselves to do exclusivity deals? Like, has FaZe had a conversation with?

• 38:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:11Speaker 04

  And so are you, would you sign to an exclusive, every FaZe member is going to be only on Twitch?

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Uh, no, I don't think we, I don't think we would do that. Um, I don't think we can, I think it would be a bad move for us. First of all, I don't want to drag our players kicking and screaming anywhere. Um, it's just a bad look, it's a bad idea. I, I don't want to, I don't want to see, you know, sow the seeds of, of, uh, of acrimony. Um, but would we look to do a deal where we'd say, okay, we'd, we'd like to come in and, and offer maybe people that we sign, you know, newly signed? I could see us doing that, where we go to a mixer or Twitch or a caffeine and say, okay, everybody new that wants to sign to FaZe, if they're not an existing deal, has to sign. But then that'll be open. If you want to be a part of FaZe, you go into this deal.

• 38:57Speaker 03

  And to me, it's all about if you're transparent, if you're open about it, if you're open about the, the commercial part of it. It's business, right? I mean, you know, there's, when, when, when we sign somebody to FaZe Clan, there is some cost. First of all, there's a cost of what we do to support that, that talent. There's, there are indirect costs. What we do on the esports side, right, which is, which is not, not a lucrative part of the business. It's actually, it's, it's an expense to the business. What we, all that money that we spend on esports, helps all of our content creators because it makes the word FaZe in front of their name make all of us more powerful.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  Actually, that's an interesting point. I, I was gonna ask, I want you to respond to something Mark Cuban said. Who, uh, Mark Cuban, big investor, has an esports team. He said, um, in aggregate, it's a good business, esports, but is it growing? Yes, but domestically here in the United States, it's an awful business. And for his, his whole point was that esports works internationally really well, specifically in the Asian regions. Not so much in the US where it is growing, but it's not where it should be. You guys are possibly exploring Asia as?

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Definitely exploring Asia.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  So talk me through that. Is esports something that you want to grow in Asian territories where it is a business? It is a lucrative business?

• 40:14Speaker 03

  We're going to grow esports globally. We're going to grow the brand globally. We're going to grow the content globally. You know, we are the most well-recognized, you know, gaming org globally, sort of by accident, by osmosis. You know, all of our members have just been making content in English and, you know, not with any eye towards, "How do I tap into that Asian market? How do I build more Asian fans?" They're not even thinking about that. They're just doing their thing, you know, which is, I think, what's incredible about where FaZe Clan is now. All of the growth has been organic, all of it. You know, we don't have a head of marketing. We don't do marketing. We

• 40:57Speaker 03

  don't have a head of social media. Now, that's not to say we're not going to do it. It's part of, you know, it's part of turning FaZe into being a fully operational organization, a fully operational company. I mean, we're still, you know, a year ago, we were, I don't know, 25 people, 20 people. Now we're 75 and we're still, you know, I can't hire people fast enough to fulfill the business demands that I need.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  And I think the question on the gaming side, people who are listening and are very into esports, very into gaming, is right now FaZe is not in League of Legends or Starcraft, I believe.

• 41:33Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 41:34Speaker 04

  Looking into developing into Asian markets where League of Legends is arguably the biggest game with Starcraft, is the idea then to partner with local talent and have people working overseas, working directly with them, setting up the streamer houses that are so common in Asian markets. Is that something you guys want to explore entirely? Where you really say, "We're going to commit to this."

• 41:54Speaker 03

  We are committing to global expansion. We are going to be boots on the ground in a lot more countries. In Asia, in Europe, in Latin America.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  We're coming. We are, you know, we're just getting warmed up, right? That, you know, we've been running, we've been running everything, you know, like we, we just been figuring out what the hell to do for the most part, right? And just trying to hold on to the size of the brand and catch up, you know, it's a huge brand and with a small business that we're trying to build the business into the brand. It's kind of an unusual chronology. Normally, the brand and the business get to grow up together. But there's a lot of opportunities in Asia. There's a lot of opportunities in the rest of the world. We, you know, our Counter-Strike team is, you know, one of the best Counter-Strike teams in the world with, with, you know, some of the most popular esports players in the

• 42:47Speaker 03

  world, and we don't take advantage of it properly because we don't have, we don't have infrastructure in order to monetize it, but we're gonna fix that.

• 42:56Nilay Patel?

  So it's funny, you said you don't usually get big enough to build a business. I think that's true for most companies. In my corner of the world, the tech industry, that's very common, right? Like you, you build a search engine and all of a sudden you're like, Google. And you're like, how do I, I guess we're just gonna shove ads in everyone's faces until they die. That's fine. That's what they do. That is a pretty common scale story on the tech side.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  On the tech side, yeah.

• 43:20Nilay Patel?

  And so there are some points of scale here that I'm just gonna ask you about. One, at some point, you, you as a CEO actually have to exert way more control over your sprawling global business than a bunch of kids in a house where you're begging them to stop texting, right? Like, at some point, you have, you know you have to do that. Are you seeing that already?

• 43:43Speaker 03

  We're figuring out where those boundaries are, and we're figuring out what-

• 43:47Nilay Patel?

  Well, so one boundary is you're gonna assign people and say, maybe you're only on Mixer because Microsoft paid, paid the company.

• 43:52Speaker 03

  And I throw that as an idea, like-

• 43:54Nilay Patel?

  Well, sure, yeah, but like, that's an example of that kind of control.

• 43:56Speaker 03

  I don't even know that I would do it. But I, what I would say is, I'm gonna explore all of the, I'm gonna look towards business practices that can help me create enterprise value for FaZe Clan and figure out what's the right format. But what's, what, what is always the backstop is the audience and the fanbase. And what's, what's interesting and what's been, you know, a real education for me is, you know- Even though I was president of Capitol Records, which is, is it, you know, has a name recognition, the fans don't comment on my business decisions and, or the business decisions of Capitol,

• 44:35Speaker 03

  I mean, with rare exception, whereas, you know, the fans really do care and, but it, and it's part of being in this community. And, and so I think that even in the exploration of conquering new frontiers and, and looking at new business opportunities, I think it's all about being sensitive to the, the players and what, and how, and how it impacts them and, and also, and how it impacts the fans, which just, which makes it a little harder to get to where you want to get to.

• 45:10Nilay Patel?

  Okay. So the next challenge in scaling, I mean, we backed into a media company organization. Like it was like me and 12 of my friends started The Verge and now we have a company, a podcast studio. He's not exaggerating. It's a very confusing situation. I don't really understand it. Uh, but you need to have an org chart.

• 45:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:28Nilay Patel?

  And you need to decide who's going to do what.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:30Nilay Patel?

  What does your org chart look like?

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Funny enough, it, it doesn't look dissimilar to a record label.

• 45:36Nilay Patel?

  So Mick Jagger on top.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  I don't know if Mick Jagger was ever on any of the labels. And he was on my label.

• 45:46Nilay Patel?

  What a surprise. All right. Go through it.

• 45:48Speaker 03

  But, but to be honest, I, I don't think that's because I'm personalizing. And I think it's because it makes sense. I think departmentally, we do a lot of the same. And if you, if you pull the lens back a bit and, you know, and, and almost take the subject matter out, what are we doing with this? We are, we are discovering talent. We are trying to develop talent into being popular. We are trying to make sure that talent has a long career and we're trying to commercialize the talent in a way that doesn't kill the joy that people have in following it. That's the same thing that you, that, if I made that statement, you know, and nobody knew my background or what I'm doing, you wouldn't know whether I'm talking about a musician or whether I'm talking about a gamer. Right?

• 46:32Speaker 03

  That's the same sort of fundamental format. Um, you know, the difference between what we have and Capitol Records is, you know, when you sign to FaZe Clan, the day you sign to FaZe Clan, you are much more famous than you were the day before. And You know, when you sign to Capitol Records or any, any record label, you maybe amongst your friends, you're, you're famous, but in the, in the outside world, you're just not.

• 46:58Nilay Patel?

  But isn't, so two things. One, record labels are not universally beloved by artists.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  No, that's right.

• 47:05Nilay Patel?

  They're not necessarily even right now universally beloved by fans. Fans are much more aware of the dynamics between labels and artists right now.

• 47:12Speaker 04

  Thank you, Taylor.

• 47:13Nilay Patel?

  I was joking about.

• 47:13Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 47:14Nilay Patel?

  But I mean, I don't know, Prince, like there's a long history of fans being aware of the dynamics between labels and artists. Two, the reason they didn't get famous when they signed is because they hadn't made the asset yet, right? They hadn't made the single, they hadn't made the album.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 47:28Nilay Patel?

  Your players are the asset, right? That's, it's like very different.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, but what I would say is when you put the name FaZe in front of your name, what we do is we shine a very bright spotlight on you and we bring our immense fan base to your doorstep. And so that, it's the, it's the story why, how an 11, when we signed him, he was an 11-year-old kid, went to a million followers on Instagram in two and a half months. Listen, we, he, we wouldn't have gotten there and he wouldn't have gotten there unless he was a compelling personality, but we also gave him the stage.

• 48:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  We put him on a stage. Look, I'll, I'll tell you the story about, about when we signed him. So, you know, we sometimes take our time. We see talent, we identify. Part of it is not even having a, of somebody in charge of recruitment, right? It's organic every, every which way.

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  You don't have a, a video game AR department?

• 48:27Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 48:28Speaker 04

  You have Nolan watching YouTube and Twitch?

• 48:30Speaker 03

  Just people who do it in the context of sort of their everyday lives and they see somebody or they play, they play with somebody and they're like, hey, this kid is good. And that's how it started. You know, there was one of our, you know, one of our talent managers and one of our founders were like, you know, check this kid out. Hey, we would talk about him occasionally. And then we were like, okay, let's go sign him. And then word got out and another org came in and started throwing money around. We have a luxury of, you know, with our content creators, we, we, we don't pay the content creators. We give the content creators a platform to, to create a business. That's, that's our model and because we can bring so much attention to them.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  And so, you know, they had gone dark, the dad had gone dark and, and, you know, the kid was on stream and we were like trying to sign him. So, you know, one of the, one of the founders sent, sent out to the guys, hey, look, we're trying to sign this kid. If somebody can go host the stream. And this is a kid that normally has got, you know, 200, 300 people watching his stream. So our guys started hosting the stream. Went from, you know, his normal 300, 1,000, 2,000, 10,000, 30,000, 40,000, 60,000 people watching this kid's stream because FaZe Clan pointed the spotlight on him. The kid in the middle of the stream, walked off stream, put on a FaZe Clan shirt, came up and that was, and you know, and that's how we knew. It's like draft day.

• 49:55Speaker 03

  But that's the power of FaZe Clan. And so it is, you know, it is the combination of us, you know, bringing our fan, our fan base to your doorstep, coupled with, you know, us picking great talent, right? We've been really adept at picking people who are compelling. Great gamers, great personality, um, great entertainers, and that combination is explosive.

• 50:20Nilay Patel?

  But I'm going to ask you straight up because I, because I think you're going to answer actually. The, the criticism of the, no, I mean, this conversation is fascinating. I, I think you've been really straight with us. So the criticism of the music industry is that you churn in beautiful young people. You milk them for money and you kick them to the curb. If, if I had to describe as uncharitably as possible, the power of a huge gaming brand that can shine a spotlight on a 12 year old for 20 minutes and then move on. I would say that that would be the biggest risk of that business model is that you'll. Make people stream until they burn out and they'll move on and you'll you will always have a ready supply of people who want to play video games for money. How do you how do you avoid that?

• 51:02Speaker 03

  Um, well, look, you can't stop burnout or you can't stop somebody who doesn't want to do it anymore.

• 51:08Speaker 04

  Do the contracts specify like the a set amount of time that they have to minimally stream?

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Absolutely not.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  A number of videos they have to produce?

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Absolutely not. And especially if you're talking about our minors, we spend a lot of time with the parents really trying to educate them on the fact that you can't put pressure on these kids. They're going to have inherent pressure. They're going to feel it, they're going to want, they're going to be excited, you know. Look, happens to be like a kid like High Sky, I've never seen a kid as nonplussed as this by everything going on. He is cool as a little cucumber, right? That happens to be his personality. But it's really important for to talk to him or, you know, his parents or Sway's parents or, you know, or Meg's parents and to to make sure they understand that the kid needs

• 51:59Speaker 03

  balance, the kid needs to be educated, the kid, you know, that that don't put pressure on them that's actually going to do more more harm than good. You know, keep it as an opportunity, help them build it and and so and support them and listen to, you know, to the feedback so so the kid doesn't have burnout.

• 52:17Speaker 04

  In traditional entertainment, uh, these they're protected by unions, that their kids have to work certain, there there are specific circumstances for when kid actors can work and what they can do.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  I mean, that's actors, not musicians.

• 52:28Speaker 04

  But do you think looking at the as as talent for gaming and esports and streaming becomes younger and and companies like FaZe Clan are interested in pursuing signing these kids, do you worry about a chance where people in, I think of an LA court, um, saying we are going to look at protecting kids who are now working for companies and are generating income from companies and are working, they're producing content?

• 52:53Speaker 03

  I I would be totally open to that. I have, I'm gonna now I'm gonna out myself, I'm I'm gonna just because of this subject and I have I have brought it up in in meetings, I have sort of, I'm maybe uniquely positioned to understand this because I was a child actor. So I really understand.

• 53:11Nilay Patel?

  This is the breaking news of the show.

• 53:13Speaker 03

  I understand some of these dynamics, so I have a real sensitivity to it. And look, anything that protects these kids, whether it's Coogan's Law, I mean, the dilemma with Coogan's Law is it's only in New York and LA. It should be national. That, you know, like, anything that's gonna, gonna protect kids, I'm all for it.

• 53:32Nilay Patel?

  So we've been talking about kids a lot, and you've referred to your, your crew as kids.

• 53:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, because I'm the, I'm the old man at the company, so.

• 53:39Nilay Patel?

  That's fair, but like, okay, this makes sense for an 11-year-old, makes sense for a teenager, you can talk to the parents, you can say, be a good parent. You got a 23-year-old, I mean, how, every sports team in the world faces this problem, okay? 23-year-old, they got a bunch of money for being talented at a thing. Their parents don't stop them from making mistakes, or working too hard, or burning out, or partying too hard, or breaking up with their girlfriend on Instagram, or whatever happened with FaZe today. Like, how do you manage that?

• 54:09Speaker 03

  One day at a time.

• 54:11Nilay Patel?

  Is that something, is that something that you're thinking about, like, I need to step in and be the adult man?

• 54:15Speaker 04

  Are there morality clauses? Are you thinking of morality clauses?

• 54:19Speaker 03

  There are.

• 54:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 03

  You know, we, there's a code of conduct, isn't that, I don't think this, we have it as, I actually am not sure if we have it as a morality clause, but we have a code of conduct.

• 54:30Speaker 04

  So how do you respond to something like what Neil just referenced, which is that there's this ongoing drama between FaZe Banks, who is face of FaZe, and allegations regarding abuse in the past relationship, nothing proven, all allegations, but it's very public, it's all on Twitter, it's all, I think, on Instagram, it's everywhere online. How do you respond? Do you, do you get calls again from investors who are like, what is this story? Because now you're breaching a territory that is concerning.

• 54:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I, I would say, in, in this particular one, no, we, we didn't, but we've certainly gotten calls from investors about certain things. Certainly when the Tifu lawsuit happened, we got calls from a lot of investors. We lost brand deals because of it, you know, we had deals that were closing, or it basically closed and about to launch, and they just, the brands got cold feet, because nobody wants that kind of attention. And, look, it's part of management, you know, as somebody who've managed artists, you know, look. I managed Kid Rock. That was a handful. Like, that was a, that was a crash course in, you know, managing sort of complicated personalities, which we have the same, you know? Look, look, you know, Banks is a complicated personality.

• 55:39Speaker 03

  But, but, you know, really compelling individuals tend to be complicated. Um, and, you know, we, believe me, we talk a lot about, um, about, you know, personal issues. We do. We, we do get into personal issues. Partially, we want to help our guys. Um, we don't, you know, we want to make sure that our guys are on the right path. Like, there is some feeling of responsibility, um, to, you know, to the, to the team members and to, to each other. Like, that's part of how we talk about it a lot, is like, we, we're all inextricably tied. Right? Like, we're in there. Well, it's like FaZe for life for, for all of us.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  A bunch of you live in a house together.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 56:21Nilay Patel?

  Do you live in a house?

• 56:22Speaker 03

  I do not live in that house.

• 56:24Speaker 04

  And there's another house beside it.

• 56:25Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 56:26Nilay Patel?

  Do you live in that house?

• 56:27Speaker 03

  I do not. No. I'm not that far, but I'm not.

• 56:30Nilay Patel?

  So I want to ask you, well, you, you've said this several times now. You've called them our guys.

• 56:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:35Nilay Patel?

  It's mostly all guys. It's actually guys. Gaming is not, I would say, the most progressive culture, especially in some of the online games. It is very male dominated. It's a bunch of young guys who are making mistakes, who have access to money. Instagram model, like, all of the mistakes are there to be made for the wrong kind of culture to develop. Are you thinking about how you might use this platform, use this influence to actually change it?

• 57:00Speaker 03

  Without, without a doubt, and I think that, um, you know, maybe the first step and the first of many steps is, you know, when we signed Ewok this summer. Um, first female to, uh, to FaZe. Um, also happens to be a, you know, a deaf gamer. And we, we have to, you know, I think signing female gamers is really important to us. Uh, it's something we talk about a lot. You know, the challenge is you don't want to sign somebody just because they're female. Right? Like, we want to, we want to look for great female gamers that fit into what we're doing and...

• 57:38Speaker 03

  You know, and hopefully, and even Ewok herself is really interested in becoming a role model for other female gamers. And so it starts with the first one. And it's not like, we don't want to do it as like a stunt, right? We don't want to sign another one as a stunt. Like, it's, we have a tendency to be slow about signing in general, but we need to sign more females. We need to sign a more diverse roster. And part of our global outreach will also enable us to do that.

• 58:11Speaker 04

  Are you prepared for cultural issues that will arise? I think of a bunch of mid 20 year olds in a house together, or online together, all hanging out, a bunch of dudes, very into gaming. And I think of fraternities.

• 58:22Nilay Patel?

  That never causes any problems.

• 58:23Speaker 04

  There's never any problems. I think of fraternities, and I think if I was a, she's a great, she's a phenomenal player. And I think if I was a woman coming, I am a woman. If I was coming into, if I'm coming into that situation, there is a part of me where my guard is immediately up, because that is just, society, that's life. How do you approach that? Where you're like, we want to make this person feel comfortable. And we also have to acknowledge that we have this very bro-y dynamic, which has sold a lot of shirts.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  Head on, and with transparency. That's it. It's like, and look, maybe this is why I have a tendency to overshare, even in circumstances like this, because we can't be afraid of what it is. We've got to, we've got to admit the things that we've got to do better. We've got to look at where we, you know, new horizons to conquer. But we've got to be open. And we were open with Ewok and her family. You know, we spent a lot of time with her and her family. It was really important. It was important for them to understand who we actually are, which is also not necessarily the same as the persona that exists online, right?

• 59:31Speaker 03

  Like, you know, look, Banks, he's a super sensitive guy. He really is. And he's full of bravado. And he's, listen, he's a rock star. The guy is like, you know, trust me, I speak from experience when I call him that. Like, it's, he is cut from the same cloth as a lot of rock stars that I've worked with. But he's also a really sensitive guy. He's really, he's an emotional guy, which also comes through in social media.

• 59:58Nilay Patel?

  So let me ask you two more questions. One, back to this tech company scale things. The things you said about diversifying. Your roster, same thing Google would say to us, same thing Amazon would say to us. Their mistake was they started way too late, right? But they'd said a lot of the same things. And one of the mistakes they made was they didn't actually have a recruiting organization built into the company that was going out looking for people. You just said, I don't have, we have this very organic. Right, this is one of those, like, you gotta scale, you gotta install the hierarchy. You need a recruiter, you need a head of marketing, you need a social, like, they're gonna have to start telling people what to do. Can you preserve that spirit while professionalizing the organization and saying to a head of recruiting,

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  a head of talent, go find me a more diverse candidate pool that meets our needs?

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we have to get on with it, right? I mean, you know.

• 1:00:48Nilay Patel?

  But this is a mistake the tech companies all made.

• 1:00:50Speaker 03

  No, no, and I agree, like, if I could hire these, if I could put the people in the chairs tomorrow, I would. One of the things I'm also hiring is a head of HR. Which I think we might have hired her yesterday, so.

• 1:01:06Nilay Patel?

  That's great. More breaking news, like a child actor had a head of HR.

• 1:01:09Speaker 03

  I think, now, hopefully we close that deal. But yeah, I mean, that's step one, and that's been part of the obstacle in my way. It's also such a challenging business to hire people for. Because what's interesting is, because it's so youth culture, so bleeding edge, that, you know, you have this, you have this kind of, how sophisticated you are as an executive is sort of inversely proportionate to your understanding of the subject matter. And so, it's a search for the sweet spot between people who are grownups, because I do need more grownups in the building.

• 1:01:46Speaker 04

  More grownups in the room.

• 1:01:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, people who have, not just a maturity, but I'm talking about a business maturity, I'm talking about people who really understand how to balance these very complicated issues. And you've, sort of, depending on what the roles are, sometimes you lean towards, alright, for this role, I need somebody who understands the subject matter, and I'll have to work on their seasoning, versus some roles you go, this is one, I need the seasoning, and I believe that they're going to apply themselves to really learn the subject matter.

• 1:02:20Nilay Patel?

  Okay, it's actually two more questions. One, I said, we're gonna talk about how we're gonna defeat the platforms all together. So we have to do that. So you live in a world where most of your content is distributed by other people's platforms. Also, the world I live in, so I'm very sympathetic to it. But you've got YouTube's rules, you got Twitch's rules, you got Instagram's rules, you got Twitter's. It's a lot of big companies that have a lot of ideas about how people should make money on their platforms.

• 1:02:42Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:02:43Nilay Patel?

  How are you managing all of that?

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  I'm back to the one day at a time.

• 1:02:47Nilay Patel?

  But do you have a preferred platform? Do you play them off against each other? Do you want to start your own Instagram?

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  We want to be everywhere. No, I'm not gonna compete with Instagram. I'm not gonna compete with any of those things. Now, are there other options that are available to us that we talk about? For sure.

• 1:03:03Nilay Patel?

  You think you can move your audience to those other options?

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  Maybe I can do both. Maybe I can, you know, it's part of the exploration of how we're developing the business, right? Like, I wouldn't say, okay, you know, starting January 1st, we're moving everybody to OTT and taking everything off the platform. That sounds like a terrible idea.

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  A lot of companies doing that.

• 1:03:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, it just sounds like-

• 1:03:24Nilay Patel?

  Are you starting a streaming service?

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  Phase Plus?

• 1:03:27Speaker 03

  But, yeah.

• 1:03:29Nilay Patel?

  Hey, that's Pat did. You gotta, I want a 20% cut of that. I heard about how you do business. 20% of that is mine.

• 1:03:37Speaker 03

  But we're exploring all of these options, right? Should there be an app where you can explore a deep, rich world of Faze? Maybe, right? We just launched our merch app. We're seeing how that is. And, you know, that merch app is going, you know, is gonna be more than a merch app, right? Does that mean I'm gonna take people off of Twitch and YouTube and that? Probably not. I think that, you know, but we're exploring what those, you know, what the different options are.

• 1:04:08Nilay Patel?

  Do you think of the platforms as marketing opportunity, like Instagram for many companies is a marketing channel. It's an extraordinarily effective marketing channel, but they want to own your relationship directly. Are these revenue platforms or marketing platforms? Some weird combo of both?

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  They're both, and, you know, the difference, you know, for us is- Our product is social media, right? The actual things that people consume are the underlying product, but they're also marketing. So, some of these things are inextricably tied. When we put out a, you know, an Instagram post that's a photo, that it can be two things, or it can be multiple things. It can be something that is content that our fans want to consume, and they love that content. I'll give you an example of something our fans loved, and it was a marketing message, but it was more than that. We decided we dropped a pair of shorts. We came up, we sold shorts for the first time. And we did, it was an animated still. And it behaved, from an engagement standpoint,

• 1:05:07Speaker 03

  like a piece of content, right? So, people, our fans, loved the content, and it delivered the message that we're also selling this new product. So, it is, you know, we use socials for, you know, it doesn't need to be one or the other. In a perfect world, it's all of the above. It's the same way that when we have brand deals for, you know, when we're promoting G Fuel, or Nissan, or Burger King. When we're doing it "right," quote unquote "right," or we're doing it best practices, that those content pieces should stand on their own, on their own merits. That our fans will watch it, and the brand message is sort of incidental to their experience.

• 1:05:50Speaker 03

  And it's done in an elegant enough way that I would watch that just because it's entertaining content. And if you happen to be telling me a brand message, cool.

• 1:06:00Speaker 04

  You're already doing it organically. You stream on Twitch, then the VOD goes on YouTube, and the YouTube video encourages the Twitch stream, Twitch stream encourages the YouTube VOD.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  When we're doing it right...

• 1:06:09Speaker 04

  Throw those premium ads on.

• 1:06:10Speaker 03

  Each part of the business supports the other side of the business.

• 1:06:13Nilay Patel?

  All right, I can only ask you, your guys are gonna kill me. I'm gonna ask you this. I promised you before we'd ever put the headphones on that I'd ask you this question. All right, it's the very beginning of your business. What does an exit for FaZe Clan look like? Is it an IPO, or are you gonna sell your shit to Google?

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't think we're gonna sell to Google. I don't know that.

• 1:06:30Nilay Patel?

  Amazon.

• 1:06:31Speaker 04

  FaZe by YouTube.

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  I actually, I actually think that there are a lot of potential buyers for, for somebody, somebody like a FaZe. Because we're in so many different things. I think we certainly could IPO. I think that's, that's, that's not an unreasonable exit. I think that we could sell to a company that owns multiple sports franchises. I think we could sell to a media company. I think we could sell to an agency. We have assets that work for all of them. I had a, I had dinner last night with, with friends. And one of the things we were talking about is, you know, we were talking about some of the, some of the traditional sports teams. And we were thinking, you know, these teams who are losing young audience, right? When you talk about traditional sports and young males, key demo, they're losing them.

• 1:07:15Speaker 03

  They're, they're fleeing in droves. That, wouldn't it be interesting to tap an organization like ours to take over their entire content strategy and communicate to these fans in a way that really understands how they want to be communicated to. So I think there's a lot of different buyers for us.

• 1:07:31Speaker 04

  You gotta pitch that to Steve Ballmer. You gotta bring that to the Clippers.

• 1:07:34Nilay Patel?

  Steve Ballmer is his own FaZe. His own marketing machine. All right, Lee, thank you so much for coming by. This is a great conversation.

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  Appreciate it. Yep.

• 1:07:43Nilay Patel?

  All right. My thanks to Lee Trink, CEO of FaZe Clan for coming on again. Just one of the most interesting conversations I've had on the show in a long time. My thanks also to Julia for joining me. I would have been lost without her. She knows all about this stuff. You can follow her and her coverage on The Verge. You can obviously find FaZe Clan on every platform in the world. We'll be back later this week with the chat show, back on Tuesday with the interview show. We got some big ones coming up, so keep an eye out for those. You can tweet at me, I'm at Reckless. I love your feedback. We'll see you soon.

• 1:08:12Speaker 08

  New and exclusive holiday decor just launched online at The Home Depot. Check out the viral Grand Duchess collection with smart holiday lights you can control from your phone. Easily customize the twinkle across trees, wreaths, and garlands to match your holiday vibe. Create stunning light effects, then switch it up with the tap of your fingers. Even the man in red will be impressed. Shop the holiday decor you want online only at homedepot.com.

• 1:08:42Speaker 09

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger: Fresh for Everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.