Snoop Dogg proclaimed he was part of the FaZe Clan during the 2022 Super Bowl, when he sported a FaZe Clan gold chain during the halftime show. He’s leaving the clan with a lot less flair.
The rapper and cultural icon quietly resigned from the board of directors of FaZe last Wednesday, according to a regulatory filing to the Securities & Exchange Commission by FaZe Holdings Tuesday. The filing said that Snoop, whose name is Calvin Broadus Jr., told the company he resigned from the board immediately on March 29. No more detail was offered, other than boilerplate language that the resignation was not the result of any disagreement with the company or any subsidiary.
After that Super Bowl reveal, Snoop Dogg agreed to join the board of FaZe last March, accompanied by a social media announcement that introduced him as FaZe Snoop. In return, he was granted restricted-share awards to about 320,000 shares of FaZe stock after it closed its going-public transaction with a special purpose acquisition company in July. The value of those shares at the time of award: $3.9 million.
“FaZe the f— up,” Faze Snoop told followers at the time.
The problem: FaZe then f—ed up.
After an early bout of investor enthusiasm that saw the paper value of Snoop’s stock hit $7.4 million last summer, the company encountered a string of management and revenue problems, marked by multiple executives resigning and a failure to meet the projections it gave investors during the going-public process last year. For instance, FaZe told Wall Street it would generate $91 million in sales for 2022 then follow with a sharp upward trajectory to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales powered by its half-a-billion social media followers. That could still happen, but in its full-year earnings announcement last week, FaZe reported a big shortfall in those roadshow numbers, registering only $70 million in revenue.
With the struggles, FaZe stock has suffered, closing Tuesday at 50 cents a share—a 97.9% decrease in value from its peak. At less than a buck, it’s now in danger of being tossed off the Nasdaq.
Because FaZe awarded Snoop Dogg shares that almost all vest over 23 months, between July last year and June 2024, according to SEC filings, he also leaves with a lot less than 320,000 shares. Going off disclosures that indicate a small batch of those shares could vest immediately based on complicated price targets, which FaZe stock probably hit last August, as well as the seven months of around 12,000 shares vesting monthly, Snoop probably leaves with around 106,000 FaZe shares.
His likely payday for seven months of service on the company’s board of directors and his year-plus as a member of the FaZe Clan: $53,184.
With assistance from Eben Novy-Williams.
