Is the Market Ready for FaZe to Go Public?
Is the Market Ready for FaZe to Go Public?
Shareholders will vote on July 15 to confirm the lifestyle gaming brand's SPAC merger agreement.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission greenlit FaZe Clan’s S-4, the final step needed for a vote to complete the company’s SPAC merger if shareholders approve.
After months of speculation and reporting that it might fail, the most popular gaming team in the world will hold a vote on July 15. It now seems clear: FaZe Clan will be public and it will be the largest launch of any esports public company in the history of the market.
Most esports stocks are penny stocks—dinner chat fodder, but certainly nothing of significance in anyone’s portfolio. There’s Luminosity Gaming parent Enthusiast Gaming ($2.20), OverActive Media ($0.53), Esports Entertainment Group ($0.43), all of whom are burning through cash with no end in sight, nor a strategy to become culturally relevant to the retail investor.
FaZe is poised to change that, and it’s being covered like it, too. The company is inarguably the most relevant of the gaming teams to the general audience, and its SPAC updates have received coverage from The New York Times, GQ, Puck and others (granted, not all positive). Those publications aren’t covering OverActive, Enthusiast or any of the other esports team parent companies floating around in the publicly traded space.
That’s what makes this moment so important: FaZe is representing the rest of the industry in its first big splash on the public markets. If it succeeds, it will draw other teams to consider public offerings and make retail investors more excited at the potential. If it fails, it will make Wall Street bearish on esports and influencer culture.
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