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The first big creator economy news story of 2026: the most popular gaming org in YouTube history has officially collapsed.
And let’s not get snarky: I know FaZe has struggled for a long time since going public because going public is hard.
There’s a lot of blame to go around from the creators who struggled to maintain the ‘brand friendliness’ needed to turn monetization up to eleven, to execs who went public before they had a real strategy to keep the ball in the air, to all of those esports pundits who weren’t always truthful about how realistic they are about their monetization strategy.
So what can we learn (and have we learned) about creator orgs in the past?
And can FaZe have a second life?
Also in this edition:
🐥 Popeyes Tries Streamer Meals Again
📉 YouTube Quits the Billboard Charts
🦾 Meta Buys Manus AI
🤷🏻 Marco Rubio Claims EU Will Arrest US Social Media Users
💪🏼 Jobs from IPSY, Kajabi, and Sony Music Entertainment
🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!
Let’s get into it.
NEWS:
How FaZe Failed
TLDR:
On Christmas Day, many of the top members of FaZe Clan, one of the most popular creator groups in YouTube history, announced they’re leaving including Stable Ronaldo, Jason The Ween, Lacy, Silky, and Adapt.
On December 27, FaZe Banks confirmed this is ‘the end’ of FaZe.
The 15 year old org was founded on anti-corporate ideology in odds with corporate thinking necessary for limitless scale, which shouldn’t be the goal of every company.
The beginning of the end of FaZe was when they went public via SPAC in July 2022.
At that time I was just a few years out from running the gaming creators division at Facebook, North America so I had intimiate knowledge of many of the financials of top gaming orgs.
They….weren’t promising.
The story of esports was always ‘think of the potential someday!’ rather than ‘we’re on a path to profitability.’
The execs should have known that. They weren’t thinking clearly. (Side note: many of those execs are now at very senior and well-funded positions elsewhere so maybe epically failing upward is the best strategy on a per-employee level…but I digress…)
The stock quickly plummeted, forcing to sell to GameSquare in March of 2024 for $9.5 million, the org valued at $730 million just a few years prior.
And that’s where we begin our tale: when a gaming org founded by popular Call of Duty trick shot creators, mostly spinning around while making impossible headshots to EDM music, became an esports juggernaut and aspirational brand to every young online gamer only to collapse under ambitions that didn’t match their capabilities.
GameSquare, FaZe’s savior when they went private, is an exceptionally well-funded holding company for top gaming publishing and marketing brands including Zoned, Stream Hatchet, and Gaming Community Network.
The brands they have speak to larger ambitions to reach Gen Z audiences through gaming, and their stack has analytics, marketing capabilities, and tech to do it.
FaZe was supposed to bring the brand and inventory.
But much like Disney’s ill-suited acquisition of Maker Studios, the nearly $1 billion oopsie, they quickly realized: you can own the brand, but you can’t own the talent.
Buzzfeed had the same issue with their creators, including The Try Guys when they left.
Or ‘One Direction’ before Zayn left.
Or, if you’re my age, Timberlake and N*SYNC.
They all have something in common: the talent that left no longer needed the brand.
That means the brand has two options:
Find a way to add outsized value to the talent so it will not make sense to the talent personally to look elsewhere, and therefore have a business model that can sustain adding that much value.
Try to lock the talent in as early and cheaply as possible.
Rumor mill, spurned on by Adin Ross, is that GameSquare tried to get all talent locked into FaZe for a 20% cut of all of their revenue.
The talent, very smartly, said no.
And this mirrors all of the companies and groups I listed above. All of them fought to keep it together, but did so because they knew the uncomfortable truth: talent can make their own infrastructure.
Especially FaZe. They swear, they vape on screen, they party, they troll.
The brand would collapse if it was built for optimial monetization.
It would be like 4chan turning into a corporate news organization.
So is it a foregone conclusion that talent orgs fail?
Heck no! As someone who has built many, and watched many fail (only after I left), I know the three secrets that keep these things together.
ABBB: Always Be Brand Building: The talent gets ‘too good’ for the brand fast if the brand isn’t earning their respect every day. Infrastructure through sales funnels, physical locations, creation infrastructure, marketing, PR, and real, honest-to-God pathways to riches are essential. Almost every org that has fallen apart did so because they couldn’t keep this part together. Buzzfeed owned the internet when they were doing top ten lists and quizzes. When they pivoted hard to video, they stopped owning the funnel, and fanbases were built on a creator level instead of a contetn level. They didn’t brand build as fast as their talent, and it crushed their growth.
Make Your Money From the Brand, Not the Talent: I’m sure GameSquare tried to lock these creators into a 20% representation fee and ownership stake because they needed it to stay profitable, but that’s a sign that the org was no longer sustainable. If they needed to make their money from the talent, they already lost. They needed to make the money from the organization they built around the talent. In other words, how do they get the talent paid as much as possible while the talent builds the FaZe brand on their behalf, then they monetize that through merch, theme parks, esports, custom games, paid communities, or anything that doesn’t involve taking a cut from a creator’s brand deals. This is how you remain additive to your talent.
Assume Churn: Night Media couldn’t keep MrBeast, and they’re still doing great working with talent like Kai Cenat. Was Jimmy a huge money-maker for them? Certainly! Was MrBeast smart to leave them? Certainly! Any revenue split is too much when you’re raising as a $5 billion company! Did it kill Night Media? Heck no! They’re right-sized for supporting top talent, but, as with any org, talent will always hit a point when they ‘graduate’ and build in-house. In fact, I strongly believe most top 500 talent in the industry shouldn’t have anyone taking a revenue split if they have the business mindset to build in-house. Remember: 10% of $5 million is $500k, so at some point you have to ask yourself, is my organization giving me more than hiring two senior folks for the same amount of money to work for me full-time?
I’m still a FaZe fan and, ultimately, I look at it as a success.
They had some bad moves, some bad execs, some talent that slowed their growth, but no organization is perfect.
The key is to learn from our mistakes as an industry.
And my key learning from the journey of FaZe: some brands are built to be killer $100 million companies and will collapse under the weight of corporate-thinkers who are trying to force it to be a unicorn without the model to support it.
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FAME & FORTUNE
What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?
🐥 Popeyes re-launched their previously ill-fated Streamer Meals initiative with Cinna, Extra Emily, RaKai, and other stop streamers, this time claiming to do it ‘the right way’ after online cancellations in late 2025 where talent claimed Popeyes didn’t have proper clearances, payment structures, nor access for fans to buy the meals in-restaurant. Details are unconfirmed about what went wrong the first time, but a Funny Mike post heavily implied it was a misunderstanding from a previous sponsorship through his popular Streamer Prom.
📉 YouTube is pulling data from the U.S. Billboard charts due to a different weighting of subscriber-supported and ad supported streams. I hope Billboard is fighting like crazy to fix this, as everything from ticket sales to cultural relevance has proven time and time again that YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and more drive music fandom, even more than music-only platforms.
🦾 Meta is still trying to win the AI game after famous high-budget hires, exits, and brand challenges! Now with the acquisition of Manus AI, they’re bringing in more chatbot expertise, even after their struggles with celebrity chatbots in 2023 (including MrBeast) and even unlicensed ones (oops). My opinion, LLMs are so similar that brand will win, and Meta has always struggled with consumers on that front. I’d spin it out as a different brand or keep it as an Instagram project.
🤷🏻 Marco Rubio claims Americans will be arrested due to their social media posts overseas. The administration responded by threatening legal action against the Europeans pushing for anti-hate speech legislation online, which, you know, they should be free to do if we care about free speech. Reminder, this is the administration that went after James Comey due to a social media post and regularly sends the FBI after American citizens when they tweet negatively about the administration. Yes, we are in a ‘post-irony’ world…
JOB BOARD
Before there was Feastables and PRIME, Michelle Phan launched IPSY, a beauty subscription box that was, at the time, by far the most profitable digital creator-launched brand. By working within such a social-first brand, you’ll be surrounded by people dedicated to your success, rather than most social media team members who have to battle the rest of the org for attention.
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MEME ZONE
I feel ya kid…
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this edition, give it a share and if you get someone to sign up, I’ll send you my ‘10 Rep-Friendly Ways to Monetize Today!’ deck!
Until next time, protect yo rep.