Faze Clan fires CEO as esports industry struggles
Zach Katz, FaZe Nickmercs, and Lee Trink at Parq Nightclub in San Diego, California. | Photo by Cassidy Sparrow/Getty Images for FaZe Clan
Faze Clan, a merchandising and influencer marketing agency that was once synonymous with the esports space, has fired CEO Lee Trink. CFO Christoph Pachler will take over for Trink on an interim basis, Bloomberg reports.
Faze Clan cultivated a lavish and freewheeling image during its early years. The firm maintained teams across many different esports titles, created gaming-adjacent content for social media platforms like Twitch and Snapchat, and sold branded apparel. Trink, who had no esports background when he became Faze’s CEO in 2018, aimed to position it as a youth-oriented culture and lifestyle company. “We are the voice of this current gaming generation,” he said on an episode of The Vergecast in 2019, during which he also compared…
