Snoop Dogg was so eager to quit FaZe Clan’s board that he may have dumped around 214K shares to do it
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Things are going from bad to worse for FaZe Clan, the esports and lifestyle brand thatbellyflopped onto the Nasdaqwith a public listing in July last year.Dexertoreports that the company has lost one of its most famous backers: weed evangelist and hip hop artist Snoop Dogg, who resigned from its board of directors on March 29, which was revealed inan SEC filingby the company yesterday.
“On March 29, 2023, Calvin “Snoop Dogg” Broadus, Jr. notified FaZe Holdings Inc. … that he is resigning from the Board of Directors,” read the filing, but noted that the resignation “was not the result of any disagreement with the Company or any of its subsidiaries”. So at least they’re still friends.
Snoop and FaZe only revealed that the rapper wouldjoin the company’s boardin March 2022, meaning his tenure has only lasted about a year.
It’s another in a long series of blows for FaZe Clan, whose stock dumped a quarter of its value on the first day of its public listing last year. Ina letter to shareholderslast week, the company touted Snoop’s participation in FaZe as one of its “Talent Highlights” and “2022 + 2023 Year-to-Date Accomplishments”. That letter was released the day after Snoop told FaZe he’d be departing its board of directors.
FaZe’s SEC filing doesn’t detail why Snoop has elected to abandon his seat on the board, but it’s not hard to figure out. The company has seen multiple executive resignations in the past year, and its fortunes haven’t recovered since its initial public listing. It recorded a loss of $168.5 million in the 2022 financial year, if you include a “one-time accounting charge of $115.3 million”. It lost $55.3 million if you don’t include that charge, but either way it’s worse than the company’s net loss of $36.9 million in the 2021 financial year.
Dexertoalso reports that FaZe Clan has been served with a “deficiency notice” by Nasdaq, threatening to delist it from the exchange unless it can keep its share price at above $1 for 10 consecutive days in the next half-year.
So it seems pretty likely that Snoop just isn’t optimistic about FaZe Clan’s future prospects, and is getting out while the getting is, ah, not exactly good, but better than it might be a few months from now.Sporticoreports that Snoop was so eager to get out that he may have sacrificed about 214,000 shares to do so, leaving him with around 106,000-or-so shares that are worth far less than their original value when he was awarded them.
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Despite all this, FaZe Clan CEO Lee Trink remained determinedly chipper in the letter to shareholders: “We’re taking the right steps to position the business for successful long-term growth,” he said, adding that he is “as optimistic as ever about the future of FaZe Clan”.
One of Josh’s first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he’s been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He’ll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin’s Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you’re all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.
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