The Vergecast - FaZe Clan CEO talks growing pains, global expansion, and lawsuits

Episode Date: December 10, 2019

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

Hey everybody, it's the Verochcast. This week's interview episode is wild. Julia Alexander joins me. We talked to Lee Trink, the CEO of Phase Clan. If you haven't heard of Phase Clan, probably means you're not a teenager. Face Clan is an all-in-one, e-sports, 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 e-sports players. 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. 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 talk 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 FaceClain. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct-taped spreadsheets, Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need.

Prompt something like, build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it on your company's data in your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all.

I'm Skylar Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. Dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Julia Alexander, how are you? I'm good. Lee Trink, you are the CEO, co-owner of the Phase Clan.

That's right. How did you decide to capitalize the Z? I didn't do it. I wasn't around when they decided to do it. It was the kids that started Phase Clan that did it. It's the same kid. You know, the founder, the original founder, you know, Phase Temper, Tommy, who drew the phase logo.

Thank God. He did a great job. He did a great job there. It's actually a really cool logo. I, um, that, yeah, they, the kids decided it. Like, like most things about phase clan, the kids decided it. Yeah. And, you know, I showed up late to the party to, uh, try and turn it into a business.

All right. Well, we're already deep on the logo. Let's start of the start. What is phase clan? What is phase clan? What is phase clan? Phase 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 e-sports, 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 they make up about half of the phase 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. They're, you know, things that relate to, you know, kids that are into gaming or people that are into gaming and just their interests. 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's going on. And I utilized sort of e-sports as the tip of that spear because it was a hot topic. But now 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, you know, what the F moment of like, wait a second, people are being paid to compete 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 explaining is, 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 the only one I've done. 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. And people built, they identified with that, with that lifestyle and culture. And they built their lives around what

that means. And that's what's happening with gaming now. Gaming is, you know, I say it often that gaming is going to drive culture and lifestyle for this next decade for sure, probably beyond. But that's a concept that I think most people don't really understand. Well, and I think to break it down a little bit further, you have a really interesting way of explaining phase. You have a three-pronged approach, which is that phase 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 phase? Right. So that's sort of the Lakers part, right? Like Lakers are a competitive basketball team. We are a competitive e-sports 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 money. You know, so that's the comparison. That's a through line there. 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 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 worth of apparel in one day. You got it's closed down part of Soho a few weeks ago. 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 cops, we're 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 incredible. And so 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 make content on essentially a daily basis that reach a lot of fans. You know, our collective social media footprint is well over 200 million. 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 comparison is not about MTV now necessarily, but MTV and its heyday really spoke for that generation and they really defined what that, you know, it was really Gen X at the time, what they were into. They were their, they were their voice. And that's how I view Phase Clan. We are the voice of this current gaming generation. We, we uniquely understand them. We create content

specifically for them. And at the moment, it is, you know, on the platforms like YouTube and Twitch and Snap and Instagram, but that's the beginning. 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 audience. So I want to dive into platforms. There's nothing I like talking about with me

to 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 Capitol 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. So about

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 suggestions.

What do you think about us going in to manage a team or teams, he said at the time? We 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 E-League and, you know, because of the music business, I had some great context there. And I said, hey, I'm interested in this space. Can you connect me to your guys? And they eventually connect me to Phase 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 Phase. And then as the industry exploded, as I started to really understand the breadth and the depth of what Faze Klan 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. 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 going to make money? 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 what the entertainment business has been for whatever, 75 or 100. years, which is dealt with platform changes and this new audience, it's a sea change in the way

these fans want to consume their content and what their relationship is with a brand like Faze Klan. 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? 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 luckily for, for all of us, the same way I

come from a culture of business. He, he came from the, you know, the fashion in the fashion business and in e-com. 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 putting in as many cash registers as you can in between the output of the brand and the consumer or the fan. It's about having a delicate balance in which you don't overly commercialize it. You're better off under-commercializing it, at least in the front end. And it doesn't mean that you, you know, 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 wrestling with that balance. What was the easiest money that you made? Because I talked to CEOs and I like, I came into the business. I looked around, I figured out what the hell is going on. And I was like, all we got to do is flip that switch. And like, we'll start making some money. What was the first switch you flipped? I would say the apparel.

The apparel was really the low-hanging fruit because we... The merch. 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 leave money on the table than go too far and start to, you know, to hurt what the... what the impact of the brand is. I mean, you know, that drop, you know, that we did with, you know, it was literally two colorways.

It was like the champion collaboration that we did. You know, 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. 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 give you a sense of the fact that we were trying to, you were trying to, trying to understand how big the brand was. You know, that first drop, 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, 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 merch team was like, we're going to do 300 units. And then the talent pushback, they were like, you know what, let's do 1,000 units. Okay, we're going to do 1,000 units. Let's go try it. 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 that the site goes live. We sold that thousand units in under two minutes. That's crazy. 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 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. So it's interesting to me hearing you, you come from a, it 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 march sales. This is traditional, like this is, this is them monetizing parisocial relationships. This is saying, I'm not beholden to investors. I'm beholding. 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.

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 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. And again, it's always better to sort of underplay your hand than overplay your hand. But the interesting about the brand, right, 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 that makes certain shows. It's I'm a fan of banks. I'm a fan of rugs who are too 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 is on Faze for a while. And all of a sudden there is this storm of controversy. And people are going, what do we do about Faze? Do we support T-Food? 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. I was hoping you could walk us through how you're dealing with everything going on with the case right now. Yeah, when there was a fight on the real world in the MTV, that's my time. So I'm very familiar with a way time with MTV. Like when there's a fight on the real world, they didn't all sue each other. and then make their own drama channel alerts about that, right? Like, that's new.

Like, you're actually in the real world. 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. And it's not uncommon. I mean, let's say fighting with the label is really common. Suing label much less common, but it exists, and it's something that I've been a part of on both sides, right?

On the label side and the artist side. So it didn't feel that foreign to me as far as the ground rules, right? There are some fundamental ways of how you conduct yourself, especially when it's under public scrutiny. That's really important. So 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,

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 e-sports was a really buzzy term and, you know, they were starting to be global news. So everybody comment on it. And but what I would say a lot is, you know, 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 they did it was a particularly ugly way. Well, and then what happened afterwards, I think if you look at Capitol being sued, most people at Capitol 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 Faye's Banks, who up until very, you know, about a year ago was the face of Face Clan. And this kind of, 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 messed up 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? Are you like, change your name to a symbol like Prince and get out? Look, it's a real challenge because. emotions are running high and there's this need to defend, right? And 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, it happens to be in this, I would say Banks falls into there are two things that happened. One is there have been moments where I've had to talk to him or somebody else or we're asking just with a plea of, please put the phone down. Just put it down.

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 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 somewhat of a different way that you need to navigate the traditional media world. And so balancing that is tough. And while this is happening, you guys are out trying to, raise investment capital for Faze. And what are those

conversations? Like we'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 Klan going off on Twitter. In a way that is common with

rappers, it is common with YouTubers. It's common with Taylor Swift. Common with Taylor Swift. I just throw that one out there. But I feel like trying to position phase as a gaming organization, a professional one, while this is happening, must have been difficult. 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 is 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's going to pour it all out and create sometimes something that's a little bit messy or not have it, I'll take it messy, because that's the real deal. And ultimately, what, you know, the reason why I think Fays Klan is so popular is it's warts and all with us, right? And I think that, look, looking back, the incident with Tifu 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, it was brutal. You know, it was, you know, my office was a, was a war room. There were, we were teamed in there, we were talking, strategy, blah, blah, but ultimately what we,

what the ultimate decision, the overarching decision is, we're going to talk directly to our fans, and we're going to tell them the entire story. And, you know,

and that's what we did. Is that when you were a lawsuit? Different. Lawsuits are different. Lawsuits are not one on social media. Yeah. So, you know, 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 the lawsuit, you know, what happens with the lawsuit, although we plan on winning the lawsuit. Yeah. I mean, you were like a DA.

I was a DA. You're like, I'm going to win the lawsuit. We're going to win the lawsuit. It's a relationship with the... You heard of your first. The relationship with fans is also an interesting thing, and I want to talk about one other phase member, possibly, I still think. He's still a face member, but he moved out of the house.

And we have to talk about Jarvis. Yeah, of course. Because, so Jarvis, for people who don't know, it was a professional Fortnite player. He was banned for, well, I would argue as a misdemeanor. But he received a lifetime ban. The thing is, the reason why I call it a 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 gaming tournaments. So that conversation. So what I'll say is he actually, he aspires to be a professional. He wasn't signed as a professional. He was signed as a content creator. He did not make it into Fortnite World Cup,

though he came really close. Look, it was brutal. It was tough. It was, 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 bridge too far.

I do. It's their decision to make, not ours. We respect their rules. But I, you know, I'm sympathetic to a 17-year-old kid who, 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 in broadcast on YouTube. Just for the listeners, what did he? do. They got him. So he made a video. There's a there was a way to basically hack the, you know, the Fortnite game with an aim bot and it's it's outlawed.

And he basically said, hey, this is what it looks like when you you know, when you, 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 count gets shut down, it doesn't matter. He's a 17-year-old kid. Yeah. And again, you know, I'm hopeful that with time, maybe things will change. But we support Jarvis while we don't support what he did. He's certainly contrite about what he did. He's posted a video about it. He was transparent about it.

Are you still having conversations with Epic? You're saying you're hopeful in time it will change. Are you guys talking to Sweeney and the team over there? 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. 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 phase 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're 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? No. I mean, we speak to them about it.

We have our managers are sensitive to it. we never are pushing the output level, right? These kids, 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 the ability to change that.

We've talked about, you know, we've talked about, really, what is, you know, what are phase charities? What are, you know, what, what does philanthropy look for, look like for us? And we talk about things that are really key and core to our guys. And we talk about the, you know, mental health aspects. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too.

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That's Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's UP-W-R-K.com. Upwork.com. You're in the music industry. Like, the Rolling Stones are on 24. now. They're going to sell out that stadium. They're old. I love the rest. They're like, they're old guys.

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 of Fortnite? Can you sell out the greatest hits? I love it. 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 going to write.

We're going to sell the book and that's going to generate revenue. even if I don't have to work 10 hours a day every day. I'm an aging rock star. I'm going to collect my checks. And maybe I'm like, you know what? I'm Mick Jagger. I'm going to do this one more time. And we're going to go sell out a stadium.

Is that sustainable for this kind of career? I think we're going to find out. I think that it's about evolving with your audience. Your audience is getting older. And your audience is going through some evolution. The difference between what these guys do and what the Rolling Stones do is the Rolling Stones. 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? But most celebrities can capture that. Not necessarily. If you're an actor or if you're a TV writer, you can't... Robert De Niro got de-aged. She's strutting around on Netflix, like eight hours at a time. Has got way bluer. But those are the rare exceptions.

In general, you have to figure out what you're... next thing is. Even as a musician, you have artists that do some type of evolution, or, you know, we tend to refer to it as reinvention, where I don't think it's reinvention. I think it's evolution. 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 phase as a business, you can also evolve from the content creator and be from one side of the camera to the other. other. So you might be able to, you know, look, I think the one thing that a lot of

YouTubers aspire to be is ex- YouTubers, right? They keep saying that. We know a lot of people who want to be ex- YouTubers. 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 at, 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... Or you're just rich and you're done. That's like another choice. That is the goal. Is that a choice for your guys? 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 old oldest of our guys are in their like mid-20s, 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 audience wants, then they're going to 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... Because you guys sign young players, too. We sign young players. 13, 14 youngest? 12 is our youngest. What does that contract look like? It's a minor contract. It's signed with, it's done with the parents. Couldn't stream on YouTube or Twitch without that. You may not be able to stream on YouTube come January 1st when new guidelines going.

Well, that's right. And look, we had an incident which, you know, Tifu outed one of our guys as being under 13 and he got kicked off at Twitch. And look, you know, does that mean we shouldn't sign people under 13? 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 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 what we're doing? Is there an ecosystem of like entertainment attorneys who have lived on that, on the side of the deal? Right, like, you know what you want. You're going to show up, kids 12, his parents are like, you're going to 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? all of their likeness rights or what have you. Or 80% of the same place. So 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 this 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, 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 talents is. That's, you know, if we had to make, if we had to build the business on kind of the percentage as a manager, as the brand 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, 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. And is that his business to run on sponsored posts and everything there? That's his business, right? We take a Vig. We take 20% of the brand deals that we bring in, but that's his business. Those are his channels. But if he brings his own brand deals in, he doesn't have to pay you. 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 to get a deal is because he's in Phase Clan.

And I've had this conversation directly with the talent. Not, you know, he's a kid, but with our other talent where they're not kids, 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 membership in Phase Clan. And so I think even if we don't bring it to you directly, we've provided $20,000, we've provided 20% value. And I would ask them directly, do you think the brand deals you get, are they 20% more lucrative

because of Faze Clan? Forget about whether they would be walking the door or not but for Fais Clan, but are they more valuable? 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. It's creator wars, streaming wars, platform wars. Right.

This is also a platform war, but what we're seeing is a lot of people decided. 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 FACE? 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? If, no, if they're signed to our contract, I mean, that's what contracts are for. Can they buy it out, though? Can they say, I don't want to be part of this right now? Can Jeff Bezos buy out banks? 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 pass.

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. Are you guys having conversations with the platforms themselves to do exclusivity deals? Like, have Fays had a conversation with, and so are you got, would you sign to an exclusive every phase member is going to be only on Twitch? No. I don't think we would, I don't think we would do that. I don't think we can't, 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. It's just a bad look, it's a bad idea. I don't want to see, you know, sow the seeds of acrimony. But would we look to do a deal where we'd say,

okay, we'd like to come in and offer maybe people that we sign, you know, newly signed. I could see us doing that where we go to a mixer

or a Twitch or a caffeine and say, okay, everybody knew that wants to sign to phase, if they're not an existing deal, has to sign. But then that'll be open if you want to be a part

of phase, you go into this deal. And to me, it's all about if you're transparent, if you're open about it, if you're open about the commercial part of it, it's business, right? I mean, you know, there's, when we sign somebody to Phase 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 e-sport side, right, which is not a lucrative part of the business. It's actually an expense to the business. All that money that we spend on e-sports helps all of our content creators because it makes the word phase in front of their name make all of us more powerful.

Actually, that's an interesting point. I was going to ask, I want you to respond to something Mark Cuban said. Mark Cuban, big investor, has an e-sports team. He said, 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 whole point was that e-sports works internationally really well, specifically in the Asian regions. Not so much in the U.S. where it is growing, but it's not where it should be.

You guys are possibly exploring Asia as... Definitely exploring Asia. So talk me through that. Is e-sports something that you want to grow in Asian territories where it is a business? It is a lucrative business. We're going to grow e-sports globally. We're going to grow the brand globally. We're going to grow the content globally.

You know, we are the most well-recognito. recognized 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, not with any eye towards, how do I tap into that Asian market? How do I build more Asian fans? They don't even thinking about that. They're just doing their thing, you know, which is, I think what's incredible about where Fays 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 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 phase 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. And I think the question on the gaming side, people who are listening and are variant

to e-sports, variant of gaming, is right now phase is not in League of Legends or StarCraft, I believe. Correct. Looking into developing into Asian markets, where Legal Legends is arguably the biggest game with StarCraft is the idea then to partner with local talent and have people working overseas and 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. 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, we're coming. We are, you know, we're just getting warmed up, right?

You know, we've been running, we've been running everything, you know, like we're, we just have 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 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 Counterstrike team is, you know, one of the best Counterstrike teams in the world with, you know, some of the most popular e-sports players in the 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 going to fix that. So it's funny you said you don't usually get big in and 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 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 going to shove ads in everyone's faces until they die. That's what they do.

That is a pretty common scale story on the tech side. On the tech side, yeah. And so there are some points of scale here that I'm just going to ask you about. One, at some point, 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. At some point, you know you have to do that. Are you seeing that already? We're figuring out where those boundaries are. And we're figuring out what.

So one boundary is you're going to sign people and say maybe you're only on mixer because Microsoft paid the company. And I throw that as an idea. Well, sure. Yeah, but I don't even know that I would do it. But what I would say is I'm going to explore all of the – I'm going to look towards business practices that can help me create enterprise value for Faze Klan and figure out what's the right format. But what is always the backstop is the audience and the fan base. And 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 capital.

I mean, with rare exception. Whereas, you know, the fans really do care. And, but it's part of being in this community. And so I think that even in the exploration of conquering new frontiers and looking at new business opportunities, I think it's all about being sensitive to the players and how it impacts them and also how it impacts the fans, which just makes it a little harder to get to where you want to get to. Okay. So the next challenge in scaling, I mean, we backed into a media company organization. It was like me and 12 of my friends started The Virgin and now we have a company in a podcast studio.

He's not exaggerating. It's a very confusing situation. I don't really understand it. But you need to have an org chart. And you need to decide who's going to do what? Yeah. What does your org chart look like? Funny enough, it doesn't look dissimilar to a record label.

So Mc Jagger on Tau. I don't know if Mick Jagger was ever on any of the label. and he was on my label. What a surprise. All right. Go through it. But to be honest, 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 pull the lens back a bit and almost take the subject matter out, what are we doing with this? We are discovering talent. We are trying to develop talent into being popular. We are trying to make sure that talent has a lot. a long career and we're trying to commercialize the talent in a way that doesn't kill the joy that people have and following it. That's the same thing that you, if I made that statement,

you know, and nobody knew my background on what I'm doing, you wouldn't know whether I'm talking about a musician or whether I'm talking about a gamer, right? That's the same sort of fundamental format. You know, the difference between what we have and Capital Records is, you know, when you sign to Faze Klan, the day you signed to Faze Klan, you are much more famous than you were the day before. And when you sign to Capitol Records or any record label, maybe amongst your friends, you're famous, but in the outside world, you're just not. So two things. One, record labels are not universally beloved by artists. No, that's right.

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. Thank you, Taylor. I was joking about that's true. 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. Okay. Your players are the asset, right? It's like very different. Yeah, but what I would say is when you put the name phase in front of your name, 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 it's the, it's the story why how when we signed him, he's 11 year

old kid went to a million followers on Instagram in two and a half months. Listen, we, 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. We put him on a stage. Look, I'll tell you the story 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 somebody in charge of recruitment, right? It's organic every which way. You don't have a video game in our department. No, we don't. You have Nolan watching YouTube and Twitch? Just people who do it in the context of sort of their everyday lives and they see

somebody or they play with somebody and they're like, hey, this kid is good. And that's how it starts. 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 talk about them occasionally. And then we're like, okay, let's go sign them. 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 don't pay the content creators. We give the content creators a platform to create a business. That's our model. And because, we can bring so much attention to them. And so, you know, they had gone dark. The dad had gone dark and, you know, the kid was on stream and we were like trying to sign him. So, you know, one of the founders 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, high sky got, you know, 200, 300, 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. 30,000, 40,000, 60,000 people watching this kid's stream because phase clan pointed the spotlight on him. The kid in the middle of the stream, walked off stream, put on a phase clan shirt, came up. And that's how we knew we were.

It's like draft day. But that's the power of phase clan. And so it is, you know, it is the combination of us, you know, bringing 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, great entertainers, and that combination is explosive. But I'm going to ask you straight up, because I think you're going to answer, actually. The criticism of the, no, I mean, this conversation is fascinating.

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 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 always have a ready supply of people who want to play video games for money. How do you avoid that? Well, look, you can't stop burnout or you can't stop somebody who doesn't want to do it anymore. Do the contract specify a set amount of time that they have to minimally stream a number of videos they have to produce? 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 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, are Megas parents. And to make sure they understand that the kid needs balance, the kid needs to be educated, the kid need, you know, that don't put pressure on them that's actually going to do more harm than good. You know, keep it as an opportunity, help them build it, and support them and listen to, you know, to the feedback. So the kid doesn't have burnout. In traditional entertainment, these, they're protected by unions. Their kids have to work certain, their specific circumstances for when kids actors can work and what they can do.

I mean, that's actors, not musicians. But do you think looking at the, as talent for gaming in e-sports and streaming becomes younger and companies like Faye's Clan are interested in pursuing signing these kids, do you worry about a chance where people in, I think of an L.A. court is 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. I would be totally open to that. I have, I'm going to, now I'm going to out my. myself. I'm going to, just because of this subject and I have brought it up in meetings, I have sort of, I'm maybe uniquely positioned to understand this because I was a child actor. So I really understand. This is the breaking news of the show. I understand some of these dynamics, so I have a real sensitivity to it. And look, anything that protects these kids, whether it's

Kugan's law, I mean, the dilemma with Kugan's law is it's only in New York and L.A. It should be national. that you know like anything that's going to protect kids I'm all so we've been talking about kids a lot and you've referred to your your crew as kids yeah well because I'm the old man at the company 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 every sports team in the world faces 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 FACE today. Like, how do you manage that? One day at a time.

Is that something that you're thinking about? Like, I need to step in and be the adult. But it's part of morality clauses. Are you thinking of morality clauses? There are. Yeah. You know, there's a code of conduct. There's not, I don't think we have it as, I actually am not sure if we have.

it as a morality clause, but we have a code of conduct. So how do you respond to something like what I just referenced, which is that there's this ongoing drama between Faye's Banks, who is face of phase 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 get calls again from investors who are like, what is this story? Because now you're breaching a territory that is concerning. Yeah, I mean, I would say in this particular one, no, 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. We had deals that were closing or basically closed and about the launch, and the brands got cold feet because nobody wants that kind of attention. And look, it's part of management. As somebody who's managed artists, you know, look, I managed kid, Rob.

That was a handful. That was a crash course in, you know, managing sort of complicated personalities, which we have the same. You know, look, you know, banks are the complicated personality. But, you know, really compelling individuals tend to be complicated. And, you know, we, let me, we talk a lot about, you know, personal issues. We do. We do get into personal issues. partially we want to help our guys.

We want to make sure that our guys are in the right path. There is some feeling of responsibility to the team members and to each other. That's part of how we talk about it a lot. It's like we're all

inextricably tied. Right? Like we're in there. It's like phase for life for all of us. A bunch of you live in a house together. That's right. Do you live in a house? I do not live in that house.

And there's another house beside it. That's right. Do you live in that house? I do not. I'm not that far, but I'm not. So I want to ask you, you've said this several times now. You've called them our guys. Yeah.

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 mental dominated. It's a bunch of young guys who are making mistakes, who have access to money, Instagram model.

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? Without a doubt. And I think that maybe the first step and the first of many steps is when we signed EWAC this summer, first female to phase,

also happens to be a deaf gamer. And we have to, you know, I think signing female gamers is really important to us. 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 look for great female gamers that fit into what we're doing. And, you know, and hopefully, and even Ewak 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. do it as like a stunt, right? We don't want to sign another one as a stunt. Like, it's, we, 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. Are you prepared for cultural issues that will arise?

I think, 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. That never causes any problems. There's never any problems. I think of fraternies, 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 into, if I'm 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 broy dynamic, which has sold a lot of shirts. 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, 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?

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 an emotional guy which also comes through in social media. So I'll 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 got to scale, you got to install the hierarchy, you need a recruiter, you need a head of marketing, you have to, like, they're going to have to start telling people what to do. Can you preserve that spirit while professionalizing an organization and saying to, ahead of recruiting, ahead of talent, go find me a more diverse candidate pool that meets our needs. Yeah, I mean, we have to get on with it, right? I mean, you know, this is a mistake the tech company is all made. No, no, I

And I agree. Like, if I could hire these, if I could put the, you know, the people in the chairs tomorrow, I would. One of the things I'm also hiring is ahead of HR. Which I think we might have hired her yesterday. That's great. More breaking news. I got a child to act or head of HR. I think now I may, you know, 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, it's 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. More grownups in the room. 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, all right, 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. Okay, I light. It's actually two more questions. One, I said we're going to talk about how we're going to defeat the platforms altogether. 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. It's a lot of big companies that have a lot of ideas about how people should make money on their platforms.

Yep. How are you managing all of that? I'm back to the one day at a time. But do you have a preferred platform? Do you play them off against each other? Do you want to start your own Instagram? We want to be everywhere. No, I'm not going to compete with Instagram.

I'm not going to compete with any of those things. Now, are there other options that are available to us that we talk about? For sure. Do you think you can move your audience to those other options? 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 planet. That sounds like a terrible idea.

A lot of companies doing that. Yeah. It just sounds like. Are you signing a streaming service? Face Plus? But, you have phase plus. Hey, that's bad. You got to, I want a 20% cut of that.

I heard about how you do business. 20% of that is mine. But we're exploring all of these options, right? Should there be an app where you can. explore a deep, rich world of phase. 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 going to be more than a merch app, right? Does that mean I'm going to take people off of Twitch and YouTube and that? Probably not. I think that, you know, but we're, we're exploring what those, those, you know, what the different

options are. Do you think of the platforms is 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? They're both. And the difference 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 like a piece of content. 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, 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. 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.

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 OD. When we're doing it right, each part of the business supports the other side of the business. I can only ask you, you guys are going to kill me. I'm going to ask you this. I promised you before we'd ever put the headphones on

that I'd ask you this question. Okay. All right, it's the very beginning of your business. What does an exit for phase claim look like? Is an IPO or are you going to sell your shit to Google? I don't think we're going to sell it to Google. I don't know that. Faze by YouTube.

I actually think that there are a lot of potential buyers for somebody like a phase. Because we're in so many different things, I think we certainly could IPO. I think 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 dinner last night with friends, and one of the things we were talking about is we were talking about some of the traditional sports teams and we're thinking, you know, these teams who are losing the young audience, right? When you talk about traditional sports and young males' key demo, they're losing them. 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. You got to pitch that's a Steve bomber. You got to bring that to the Clippers. That's what they need. Steve Palmer is his own phase. His own marketing machine.

All right, Lee, thank you so much for going by. It's a great conversation. I appreciate it. Yeah. All right, my thanks to Lee Trink, CEO, Face Clan for coming on. Again, just one of the most interesting conversations I've had in 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 Face 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.